Lady Lufton, turning expressly to her old friend Fanny.
"Oh, do you name the day. We never have many engagements, you know."
"Will Thursday do, Miss Robarts? You will meet nobody you know, only my son; so you need not regard it as going out. Fanny, here, will tell you that stepping over to Framley Court is no more going out than when you go from one room to another in the parsonage. Is it, Fanny?"
Fanny laughed and said that that stepping over to Framley Court certainly was done so often that perhaps they did not think so much about it as they ought to do.
"We consider ourselves a sort of happy family here, Miss Robarts, and are delighted to have the opportunity of including you in the ménage."
Lucy gave her ladyship one of her sweetest smiles, but what she said at that moment was inaudible. It was plain, however, that she could not bring herself even to go as far as Framley Court for her dinner just at present. "It was very kind of Lady Lufton," she said to Fanny; "but it was so very soon, and—and—and if they would only go without her, she would be so happy." But as the object was to go with her—expressly to take her there—the dinner was adjourned for a short time—sine die.
It was nearly a month after this that Lucy was first introduced to Lord Lufton, and then it was brought about only by accident. During that time Lady Lufton had been often at the parsonage, and had in a certain degree learned to know Lucy; but the stranger in the parish had never yet plucked up courage to accept one of the numerous invitations that had reached her. Mr. Robarts and his wife had frequently been at Framley Court, but the dreaded day of Lucy's initiation had not yet arrived.
She had seen Lord Lufton in church, but hardly so as to know him, and beyond that she had not seen him at all. One day, however—or rather one evening, for it was already dusk—he overtook her and Mrs. Robarts on the road
