"I am asking one or two friends to tea," she wrote, "and I hope you will come. A gentleman will be with us who is a great performer on the piano." It was in this way that the more frivolous intention was veiled. But, unfortunately, as is the case with well-known persons in general, Mrs. Seton's friends judged the past by the present, and were aware of the risks they would run. "It will be one of her usual affairs," said Miss Margaret, with a glance of intelligence and warning to her sister. "Just that, Margaret, I should suppose," said Miss Jean. "Then it will not be worth while for Lilias to take the trouble of dressing herself, Jean--a few old ladies invited to their tea." "That was what I was going to say, Margaret. I would not fash to go, if I was Lilias. She can have Katie here to-morrow." "Sisters!" cried Lilias, springing up before them, "you said that last time, and there was a dance. It is very hard upon me, if I am never to have a dance--never till I am as old as you." The two ladies were seated in two chairs, both large, with high backs and capacious arms, covered with faded velvet, and with each a footstool almost as large as the chair. They were on either side of the window, as they might have been, in winter, on either side of a fire. They wore black dresses, old and dim, but made of rich silk, which was still good, though they had got ever so many years' wear out of it, and small lace caps upon their heads. Miss Jean was fair, and Miss Margaret's brown locks had come to resemble her sister's by dint of growing grey. They had blue eyes, large and clear, so clear as almost to be cold; and good, if somewhat large, features, and resembled each other in the delicacy of their complexions in which there was the tone of health, with scarcely any colour. Between them, on a small, very low seat, not sitting with any dignity, but plumped down like a child, was the third, the heroine of the veil, whose envelope had disguised her so completely that even the lively mind of Lewis had not been roused to any curiosity about her. She had jumped up when she made that observation, and now flung herself down again with a kind of despairing abandon. She looked eighteen at the utmost, a small, slight creature, not like the other ladies in a single feature, at any time; and now, with her brow puckered, the corners of her mouth drooping, her eyes wet, more unlike them, in her young excitement and distress, than ever. "Now, Lilias, don't be unreasonable, my dear. If it's a dance, it stands to reason you cannot go; but what reason have you to suppose it is a dance? none whatever. 'I am asking one or two friends to tea.' Is that like dancing? She would not ask Jean and me, I suppose, if that was what she meant. We are going to hear a gentleman who is a great performer on the piano. It appears to me that will be rather a dreary style of entertainment, Jean; and I am by no means certain that I will go."