“Oh, people that hate one another can always find something ill-natured to say,” retorted Lucy, with a world of meaning. Mrs. Bazalgette turned red, and her little nose went up into the air at an angle of forty-five. She said, with majestic disdain: “I don't hate the man--I don't condescend to hate him.” “Then don't condescend to backbite him, dear.” This home-thrust, coming from such a quarter, took away my Lady Disdain's very breath. She sat transfixed; then, upon reflection, got up a tear, and had to be petted. This sweet lady departed, flinging down her firebrand on those hospitable boards. Lucy, though she had defended her uncle, was not a little vexed that he had managed matters so as to get her talked of with Mr. Talboys. Her natural modesty and reserve prevented her from remonstrating; nor was there any positive necessity. She was one of those young ladies who seem born mistresses of the art of self-defense. Deriving the art not from experience, but from instinct, they are as adroit at seventeen as they are at twenty-seven; so a last year's bird constructs her first nest as cunningly as can a veteran feathered architect. Therefore, without a grain of discourtesy or tangible ill-temper, she quietly froze, and a small family with her, they could not tell how or why, for they had never even suspected this girl's power. You would have seemed to them as one that mocketh had you told them they owed their gayety, their good-humor, their happiness, and their conversational powers to her. Of these Talboys suffered the most. She brought him to a stand-still by a very simple process. She no longer patted or spurred him. To vary the metaphor, a man that has no current must be stirred or stagnate; Lucy's light hand stirred Talboys no more; Talboys stagnated. Mr. Fountain suffered next in proportion. He began to find that something was the matter, but what he had no idea. He did not observe that, though Lucy answered him as kindly as ever, she did not draw him out as heretofore, far less that she was vexed with him, and on her guard against him and everybody, like a _maitresse d'armes._ No. “The days were drawing in. The air was heavy; no carbon in it. Wind in the east again!!!” etc. So subtle is the influence of these silly little creatures upon creation's lords.