which gave them reason to regret that their remarks upon his mother
and his family had not been made _sotto voce_.

"Lady Langdale's carriage stops the way!" Lord Colambre made no offer
of his services, notwithstanding a look from his mother. Incapable of
the meanness of voluntarily listening to a conversation not intended
for him to hear, he had, however, been compelled, by the pressure
of the crowd, to remain a few minutes stationary, where he could not
avoid hearing the remarks of the fashionable friends: disdaining
dissimulation, he made no attempt to conceal his displeasure. Perhaps
his vexation was increased by his consciousness that there was some
mixture of truth in their sarcasms. He was sensible that his mother,
in some points--her manners, for instance--was obvious to ridicule and
satire. In Lady Clonbrony's address there was a mixture of constraint,
affectation, and indecision, unusual in a person of her birth, rank,
and knowledge of the world. A natural and unnatural manner seemed
struggling in all her gestures, and in every syllable that she
articulated--a naturally free, familiar, good-natured, precipitate,
Irish manner, had been schooled, and schooled late in life, into a
sober, cold, still, stiff deportment, which she mistook for English.
A strong Hibernian accent she had, with infinite difficulty, changed
into an English tone. Mistaking reverse of wrong for right, she
caricatured the English pronunciation; and the extraordinary precision
of her London phraseology betrayed her not to be a Londoner, as the
man who strove to pass for an Athenian was detected by his Attic
dialect. Not aware of her real danger, Lady Clonbrony was, on the
opposite side, in continual apprehension every time she opened her
lips, lest some treacherous _a_ or _e_, some strong _r_, some puzzling
aspirate or non-aspirate, some unguarded note, interrogative, or
expostulatory, should betray her to be an Irishwoman. Mrs. Dareville