"I beg pardon, grandmamma dear," she said, going to her seat quickly. "I did not know you had come home." "We have a dinner-hour," announced her ladyship, "and _I_ do not disregard it." "I am very sorry," faltered the culprit. "That is enough, Lucia," interrupted Lady Theobald; and Lucia dropped her eyes, and began to eat her soup with nervous haste. In fact, she was glad to escape so easily. She was a very pretty creature, with brown eyes, a soft white skin, and a slight figure with a reed-like grace. A great quantity of brown hair was twisted into an ugly coil on the top of her delicate little head; and she wore an ugly muslin gown of Miss Chickie's make. For some time the meal progressed in dead silence; but at length Lucia ventured to raise her eyes. "I have been walking in Slowbridge, grandmamma," she said, "and I met Mr. Burmistone, who told me that Miss Bassett has a visitor--a young lady from America." Lady Theobald laid her knife and fork down deliberately. "Mr. Burmistone?" she said. "Did I understand you to say that you stopped on the roadside to converse with Mr. Burmistone?" Lucia colored up to her delicate eyebrows and above them. "I was trying to reach a flower growing on the bank," she said, "and he was so kind as to stop to get it for me. I did not know he was near at first. And then he inquired how you were--and told me he had just heard about the young lady." "Naturally!" remarked her ladyship sardonically. "It is as I anticipated it would be. We shall find Mr. Burmistone at our elbows upon all occasions. And he will not allow himself to be easily driven away. He is as determined as persons of his class usually are." "O grandmamma!" protested Lucia, with innocent fervor. "I really do not think he is--like that at all. I could not help thinking he was very gentlemanly and kind. He is so much interested in your school, and so anxious that it should prosper." "May I ask," inquired Lady Theobald, "how long a time this generous expression of his sentiments occupied? Was this the reason of your forgetting the dinner-hour?" "We did not"--said Lucia guiltily: "it did not take many minutes. I--I do not think that made me late." Lady Theobald dismissed this paltry excuse with one remark,--a remark made in the deep tones referred to once before. "I should scarcely have expected," she observed, "that a granddaughter of mine would have spent half an hour conversing on the public road with the proprietor of Slowbridge Mills." "O grandmamma!" exclaimed Lucia, the tears rising in her eyes: "it was not half an hour." "I should scarcely have expected," replied her ladyship, "that a granddaughter of mine would have spent five minutes conversing on the public road with the proprietor of Slowbridge Mills."