"The fact is," she continued after a few other inquiries, and having thrown her bonnet aside, and put back the ringlets from her face--flushed and heated to a very brilliant hue by the exertions of a hurried drive--she seated herself to partake of the dinner reproduced for herself and her companion. "The fact is, I have really been engaged in your service, for feeling sure you would be horrified to come out of the wilds of Wales, to find us here in as stupid and uncivilized a state of reclusiveness as any of the natives of Kamschatka--though, for what I know," she parenthesized with a laugh, "_they_ may have much more society of their kind--feeling sure, however, of the dullness of this place, I determined to drive my ponies as far as Morland, and see if I could beat up a few recruits from the party assembled there, for your enlivenment." Mary smiled and blushed, hardly knowing how to answer this speech. "_I_ am a person," continued Mrs. de Burgh, "who _can_ exert myself a little for the sake of my friends--who _am_ willing to take some slight trouble, unconnected with my own tastes and inclinations; to consider that a young lady _may_ possibly require a little more amusement than seeing trees cut down--a little more society than a man, his wife and two children." Mary remarked the flashing eyes of Mrs. de Burgh directed towards her husband, as she made this latter speech with much of marked significance in her look and tone; and with the very contradictory charges brought against the absent wife by Mr. de Burgh fresh in her memory, she would, if she had deemed it smiling matter, have been inclined to smile to see the table thus turned upon him. Perhaps her cousin was not himself quite unimpressed or unconvicted in his conscience by the unconscious retort, for colouring slightly, and for the first time directly addressing his wife since her entrance, though he had entered into some conversation with the gentleman by his side, he said with a not ill-natured, though somewhat provoking laugh, which nevertheless displayed to great advantage his set of ivory teeth. "Well, Olivia, pray, the next time let your _unselfish consideration_," with a stress on the latter words, "be a little more considerately timed. To keep a tired guest waiting for her dinner till nearly nine o'clock--for you knew as well as I did, that she was sure to arrive before seven--whilst you are scouring the country in search of people to say pretty things to her on the morrow, is a specimen of attentive consideration, which at least was not dreamt of before in my philosophy."