course," she said.

"Well, my dear, perhaps not. I don't say that it is. I do not wish to
put the slightest constraint upon your feelings. If I did not have
the most thorough dependence on your good sense and high principles,
I should not speak to you in this way. But as I have, I thought it
best to tell you that both Lady Lufton and I should be well pleased
if we thought that you and Lord Lufton were fond of each other."

"I am sure he never thinks of such a thing, mamma."

"And as for Lucy Robarts, pray get that idea out of your head; if not
for your sake, then for his. You should give him credit for better
taste." But it was not so easy to take anything out of Griselda's
head that she had once taken into it. "As for tastes, mamma, there
is no accounting for them," she said; and then the colloquy on that
subject was over. The result of it on Mrs. Grantly's mind was a
feeling amounting almost to a conviction in favour of the Dumbello
interest.

CHAPTER XXVI

Impulsive

I trust my readers will all remember how Puck the pony was beaten
during that drive to Hogglestock. It may be presumed that Puck
himself on that occasion did not suffer much. His skin was not so
soft as Mrs. Robarts's heart. The little beast was full of oats and
all the good things of this world, and therefore, when the whip
touched him, he would dance about and shake his little ears, and run
on at a tremendous pace for twenty yards, making his mistress think
that he had endured terrible things. But, in truth, during those
whippings Puck was not the chief sufferer. Lucy had been forced to
declare--forced by the strength of her own feelings, and by the
impossibility of assenting to the propriety of a marriage between
Lord Lufton and Miss Grantly--, she had been forced to declare that
she did care about Lord Lufton as much as though he were her brother.
She had said all this to herself--nay, much more than this--very
often. But now she had said it out loud to her sister-in-law; and she
knew that what she had said was remembered, considered, and had, to a
certain extent, become the cause of altered conduct. Fanny alluded
very seldom to the Luftons in casual conversation, and never spoke
about Lord Lufton, unless when her husband made it impossible that
she should not speak of him. Lucy had attempted on more than one
occasion to remedy this, by talking about the young lord in a
laughing and, perhaps, half-jeering way; she had been sarcastic a