great friend of the
Sawab."

"You used to be his friend too," said Lucy.

"I felt for him,--and do feel for him. All that is very well. I ask
no one to agree with me on the question itself. I only say that Mr.
Greystock's mode of treating it was unbecoming."

"I think it was the very best speech I ever read in my life," said
Lucy, with headlong energy and heightened colour.

"Then, Miss Morris, you and I have very different opinions about
speeches," said Lord Fawn, with severity. "You have, probably, never
read Burke's speeches."

"And I don't want to read them," said Lucy.

"That is another question," said Lord Fawn; and his tone and manner
were very severe indeed.

"We are talking about speeches in Parliament," said Lucy. Poor Lucy!
She knew quite as well as did Lord Fawn that Burke had been a House
of Commons orator; but in her impatience, and from absence of the
habit of argument, she omitted to explain that she was talking about
the speeches of the day.

Lord Fawn held up his hands, and put his head a little on one side.
"My dear Lucy," said Lady Fawn, "you are showing your ignorance.
Where do you suppose that Mr. Burke's speeches were made?"

"Of course I know they were made in Parliament," said Lucy, almost in
tears.

"If Miss Morris means that Burke's greatest efforts were not made
in Parliament,--that his speech to the electors of Bristol, for
instance, and his opening address on the trial of Warren Hastings,
were, upon the whole, superior to--"

"I didn't mean anything at all," said Lucy.

"Lord Fawn is trying to help you, my dear," said Lady Fawn.

"I don't want to be helped," said Lucy. "I only mean that I thought
Mr. Greystock's speech as good as it could possibly be. There wasn't
a word in it that didn't seem to me to be just what it ought to be. I
do think that they are ill-treating that poor Indian prince, and I am
very glad that somebody has had the courage to get up and say so."

No doubt it would have been better that Lucy should have held her
tongue. Had she simply been upholding against an opponent a political
speaker whose speech she had read with pleasure, she might have held
her own in the argument against the whole Fawn family. She was a
favourite with them all, and even the Under-Secretary would not have
been hard upon her. But there had been more than this for poor Lucy
to do. Her heart was so truly concerned in the matter, that she could
not refrain herself from resenting