“Capable of what?” said Lucy, almost angry. She, for her part, had a great admiration for Mrs. Stone. She had a girl’s belief in and loyalty to, the elder woman, who yet was not too old to be out of sympathy with girls. She admired her mature beauty, her dress, everything about her, and to hear Mrs. Stone laughed at was painful to Lucy. It affected that _esprit de corps_ which is next to self-regard, or sometimes even goes before it. She fell, her own moral standing involved when any one questioned, or seemed to question, the superiority of her leader. It was almost the only occasion on which any latent gleam of temper came to Lucy’s mild eyes.
“You don’t understand it, my dear,” he said, “it’s a joke between Mrs. Stone and me. She is capable of making me a party to my own defeat,” he said, with a new series of chuckles, “of bringing me into the conspiracy against myself. That’s what I call clever, Lucy; oh, she’s a very able woman! but let us hope this time she won’t be so successful as she deserves. Forewarned is forearmed; I know now what I’ve got to look forward to, and I hope she won’t find me an easy prey, my dear, thanks to you.”
“I can not in the least, tell what you mean, papa,” said Lucy, with dignity, “and if it is anything against Mrs. Stone, I don’t want to know; and _I_ hope she will be successful, whatever she wishes to do--though I don’t know what it is,” the girl added, with vehemence quite unusual to her. It brought the color to her usually pale cheek. She got up from her chair with angry haste. “I am going to get ready for dinner,” she said, “and if I have said anything to set you against Mrs. Stone, I did not mean it, and I am very sorry. It must be my fault, for I am quite sure there is nothing wrong in anything _she_ wants to do.”
It was as if Lucy flounced out of the room, so different was it from her usual calm, though even now her demeanor was quiet enough. But her father was not much affected by the girl’s vehemence. He sat looking after her, and chuckled, watching her gray gown whisk--nay, almost whisk--the word was too violent to be employed to any movement of Lucy’s--round the corner of the big screen, and thought to himself how wise he had been, and how clever in choosing an instructress for Lucy of whom she thought so well. Mrs. Stone’s design, which he thought he had found out, amused, and, indeed, pleased him, too. He liked to see that this fortune, of which he thought so much, produced a corresponding effect upon others, and, indeed, would have been disappointed if there had been nobody “after” it during his life-time. This was the first, and he chuckled over the advent of the suitor, whom he determined to play and amuse himself with. That Mrs. Stone should have begun to scheme already did not displease, rather flattered him, especially as it gave him a fresh evidence of his penetration in finding her out, and confidence in his own power of baffling her. Another man might have been taken in, but not he. There he sat complacent, while Lucy changed her gray gown for a blue one.