He stayed to be reassured that his return was all his Fanny wanted, and then hurried back to her, while Albinia and Sophy pursued their way down the hill. ‘News for grandmamma. We must give her a particular description of the hero.’ ‘How ugly he thought me!’ said Sophy, quaintly. ‘My dear, I believe that is the first thing you think of when you meet a stranger!’ ‘I saw it this time,’ returned Sophy. ‘His chin went up in the air at once. He set me down for Mrs. Kendal, and you for Miss Sophy.’ ‘Nonsense,’ said Albinia, for the inveterate youthfulness of her bright complexion and sunny hair was almost a sore subject with her. ‘Your always fancying that every one is disgusted with you, is as silly as if you imagined yourself transcendently beautiful. It is mere self-occupation, and helps to make you blunt and shy.’ ‘Mamma,’ said Sophy, ‘tell me one thing. Did you ever think yourself pretty?’ ‘I have thought myself looking so, under favourable circumstances, but that’s all. You are as far from ugliness as I am, and have as little need to think of it. As far as features go, there’s the making of a much handsomer woman in you than in me.’ Sophy laughed. A certain yearning for personal beauty was a curious part of her character, and she would have been ashamed to own the pleasure those few words had given her, or how much serenity and forbearance they were worth; and her good-humour was put to the proof that evening, for grandmamma had a tea-party, bent on extracting the full description of the great Algernon Greenaway Cavendish Dusautoy, Esquire. Lucy’s first sight was less at her ease. Elizabeth Osborn, with whom she kept up a fitful intimacy, summoned her mysteriously into her garden, to show her a peep-hole through a little dusty window in the tool-house, whence could be descried the vicarage garden, and Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, as, with a cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets, ‘Stately stept he east the wa’, and stately stept he west.’ Lucy was so much amused, that she could not help reporting it at home, where Gilbert forgot his sorrows, in building up a mischievous romance in honour of the hole in the ‘sweet and lovely wall.’ But the parents’ feud did not seem likely to hold out. A hundred thousand pounds on one side of the wall, and three single daughters on the other, Mrs. Osborn was not the woman to trust to the ‘wall’s hole;’ and so Mr. Dusautoy’s enemy laid down her colours; and he was too kind-hearted to trace her sudden politeness to the source.