"The curtain then rose for the ballet; at first, Lucy was delighted with the scenery and pageantry, for the spectacle was grand and imposing. But at length the resounding plaudits announced the _entrée_ of the perfect Taglioni. Lucy was a little astonished at her costume upon her first appearance. She was attired as a goddess, and goddesses' gowns are somewhat of the shortest, and their legs rather _au naturel_; but when she came to elicit universal admiration by pointing her toe, and revolving in the slow _pirouette_, Lucy, from the situation in which she sat was overpowered with shame at the effect; and whilst Lady Gayland, with her _longnette_ fixed on the stage, ejaculated, 'Beautiful! inimitable!' the unpractised Lucy could not help exclaiming, 'O that is too bad! I cannot stay to see that!' and she turned her head away blushing deeply." "Is your ladyship ill?" exclaimed Lord Stayinmore. "Castleton, I am afraid Lady Castleton feels herself indisposed." "Would you like to go?" kindly inquired Castleton. "O so much!" she answered. "Are you ill, my dear?" asked Lady Gayland. "Oh, no!" she said. "Then you had better stay, it is so beautiful." "Thank you, Lord Castleton is kind enough to let me go." (They get into the carriage.) "And how do you find yourself now, my dear Lucy?" tenderly inquired Castleton, as the carriage drove off. "Oh, I am quite well, thank you." "Quite well! are you? What was it, then, that was the matter with you?" "There was nothing the matter with me, it was that woman." "What woman? what can you mean? Did you not say that you were ill; and was not that the reason that we hurried away?" "No! YOU said I was ill; and I did not contradict you, because you tell me that in the world, as you call it, it is not always right to give the real reason for what we do; and therefore I thought, perhaps, that though of course you wished me to come away, you liked to put it upon my being ill." "Of course I wished you to come away! I was never more unwilling to move in all my life; and nothing but consideration for your health would have induced me to stir. Why should I have wished you to come away?" "Why, the naked woman," stammered Lucy. "What can you mean?" "You couldn't surely wish me to sit by the side of those people, to see such a thing as that?" "As to being by the side of those people, I must remind you, that it was Lady Gayland's box in which you were; and that whatever she, with her acknowledged taste and refinement, sanctions with her presence, can only be objected to by ignorance or prejudice. You have still a great deal to learn, my dear Lucy," added he, more kindly; "and nothing can be so fatal to your progress in that respect, as your attempting to lead, or to find fault, with what you do not understand."