l about it, though
Lucius did not.

Then Mrs. Furnival sank into silence; and we need not follow, word
for word, the conversation between the young lady and the young
gentleman. Mr. Mason thought that Miss Furnival was a very nice girl,
and was not at all ill pleased to have an opportunity of passing
an evening in her company; and Miss Furnival thought--. What she
thought, or what young ladies may think generally about young
gentlemen, is not to be spoken openly; but it seemed as though she
also were employed to her own satisfaction, while her mother sat
moody in her own arm-chair. In the course of the evening the footman
in livery brought in tea, handing it round on a big silver salver,
which also added to Mrs. Furnival's unhappiness. She would have
liked to sit behind her tea-tray as she used to do in the good
old hard-working days, with a small pile of buttered toast on
the slop-bowl, kept warm by hot water below. In those dear old
hard-working days, buttered toast had been a much-loved delicacy
with Furnival; and she, kind woman, had never begrudged her eyes, as
she sat making it for him over the parlour fire. Nor would she have
begrudged them now, neither her eyes nor the work of her hands, nor
all the thoughts of her heart, if he would have consented to accept
of her handiwork; but in these days Mr. Furnival had learned a relish
for other delicacies.

She also had liked buttered toast, always, however, taking the pieces
with the upper crust, in order that the more luscious morsels might
be left for him; and she had liked to prepare her own tea leisurely,
putting in slowly the sugar and cream--skimmed milk it had used to
be, dropped for herself with a sparing hand, in order that his large
breakfast-cup might be whitened to his liking; but though the milk
had been skimmed and scanty, and though the tea itself had been put
in with a sparing hand, she had then been mistress of the occasion.
She had had her own way, and in stinting herself had found her own
reward. But now--the tea had no flavour now that it was made in the
kitchen and brought to her, cold and vapid, by a man in livery whom
she half feared to keep waiting while she ministered to her own
wants.

And so she sat moody in her arm-chair, cross and sulky, as her
daughter thought. But yet there was a vein of poetry in her heart, as
she sat there, little like a sibyl as she looked. Dear old days, in
which her cares and solicitude were valued; in which she