She even persuaded herself that it was her "place" and a kind of "duty" to learn as much about her future sister-in-law as possible; people would talk, and it was only proper and right, when certain subjects were introduced, that she, in her future capacity of Mrs. Haldane Carteret (the cards were printed, and very new, and shiny, and important they looked), should know exactly "how things stood," and what she should have to say. Which was a reflection full of foresight on the part of the eldest Miss Crofton, and partaking somewhat of the nature of prophecy, as, from the hour of Mrs. Baldwin's marriage, the subject of her colonial life had never been revived in the coteries of "the neighbourhood." Robert Meredith had method in his mischief. He did not offend the _amour propre_ of Lucy by speaking contemptuously of Mrs. Baldwin, or betraying the dislike which he entertained towards her; he dexterously mingled in the revelations which he made to Lucy an affected compassion for Margaret's past sorrows, and a congratulatory compassion of her present enviable position, with artful insinuations of the incongruity between the Mrs. Baldwin of the present and the Mrs. Hungerford of the past, and a kind of bashful wonder, which he modestly imputed to his colonial ignorance of the ways of society, how any person could possibly consider Miss Lucy Crofton other than in every respect superior to Mrs. Baldwin. The boyish flattery pleased Lucy's vanity, the boyish admiration pleased her, and she entirely deprecated the idea that Robert's manners and ideas were not on a par with those of other people born on this side of the ocean. "You must remember," she said with much coquetry, and a smile which she intended to be immensely knowing, "that Mrs. Baldwin is a great lady in her way, and I am not of anything like so much importance. I fancy that would make as much difference in your part of the world as here." And then they talked a great deal of his part of the world; and Robert acknowledged that his most earnest desire was that he might never see Australia again. And Lucy Crofton confessed that she was very glad Haldane could not be sent _there_, at least on that odious "foreign service," which she thought a detestable and absurd injustice, devised for the purpose of making the wives and families of military men miserable. She was quite alive to the fact that they were highly ornamental, but could not see that soldiers were of the slightest use at home--and as to abroad, they never did anything there, since war had ceased, but die of fevers and all sorts of horrors. So the pair pursued an animated and congenial conversation, of which it is only necessary to record two sentences. "I suppose you have no one belonging to you in Australia?" Robert Meredith asked Miss Crofton, in a tone which implied that to so exceptionally delightful a being nothing so objectionable as a colonial connection could possibly belong.