“Hallo!” said Sir Tom. He had been reading on, without any particular attention to what he read, until the recollection of what it meant suddenly flashed upon him. He grew very red, put down the paper, and looked at his companions. “By Jove!” he cried. “I told you not to read it,” cried Lady Randolph. “Never mind, Lucy, my love, nobody will know it is you. Oh, I could kill the presumptuous, impertinent-- And that woman is worse!” she cried, with vehemence. “She who knew all about it; I will never forgive her. She shall never enter this house.” “Woman?” said Sir Thomas, “what woman? By Jove!” here he got up and buttoned his coat, “whoever the fellow is he shall have my opinion of him before he is much older.” “Sit down, Tom, sit down. If it was a fellow whom you could knock down there would be no great harm done; no fellow ever wrote _that_,” cried Lady Randolph, with that fine contempt of masculine efforts which is peculiar to women. “Oh, I know the hand! I know every stroke! But never mind, never mind, my dear child, nobody will connect you with it; unless the ‘Age’ gets hold of it, and gives us all a paragraph: there is nothing more likely,” she cried with tears of anger and annoyance. As for Sir Thomas, he paced about the room in great perturbation, saying, “By Jove!” under his breath. “A woman! then there is nothing to be done,” he said. “Oh, no; you can’t knock her down, more’s the pity! or call her out. But, Tom, if you will think, it is just as well, it is far better; we can’t have any talk got up about that innocent child.” “Lady Randolph, is it me you are thinking of? What harm can it do me?” said Lucy, who had grown pale, but was puzzled and frightened, and did not quite understand why all this excitement should be. “What harm, indeed!” cried Lady Randolph, “so long as you don’t mind it, my darling! She is the only one that has sense among us, Tom.” “That is all very well,” Sir Tom said. “She is too young to understand; it is meant for an insult. There’s the harm of women getting their fingers into every pie. You can’t kick them. By Jove! isn’t there any other way that one can serve her out?” “Sir Thomas,” said Lucy, “you laughed at me about it yourself.” “So I did; I am ready to laugh at you, my dear little girl, any moment; but I should like to see another man do it,” he cried. Lady Randolph looked at him in dismay. What could he mean?--to speak with such kindly familiarity, as if she were his cousin, at the least. (Though Lady Randolph professed to be a connection, yet this link was not even known to Sir Tom.) Would not the heiress be alarmed? would not she suspect and divine? She turned her eyes furtively toward Lucy, more troubled than before. But Lucy took it all very calmly. She showed no consciousness of too much or too little in her new friend’s address. She smiled at him with grateful confidence, without even a blush. What was there to blush for? Then her face clouded over a little.