“I suppose it may be: but why consider the subject? What is love to you? What do you know about it?”

She crimsoned, half in irritation, half in shame.

“Now, Lucy,” she said, “I won’t take that from you. It may be well for papa to look on me as a baby: I rather prefer that he should thus view me; but you know and shall learn to acknowledge that I am verging on my nineteenth year.”

“No matter if it were your twenty-ninth; we will anticipate no feelings by discussion and conversation; we will not talk about love.”

“Indeed, indeed!” said she⁠—all in hurry and heat⁠—“you may think to check and hold me in, as much as you please; but I have talked about it, and heard about it too; and a great deal and lately, and disagreeably and detrimentally: and in a way you wouldn’t approve.”

And the vexed, triumphant, pretty, naughty being laughed. I could not discern what she meant, and I would not ask her: I was nonplussed. Seeing, however, the utmost innocence in her countenance⁠—combined with some transient perverseness and petulance⁠—I said at last⁠—

“Who talks to you disagreeably and detrimentally on such matters? Who that has near access to you would dare to do it?”

“Lucy,” replied she more softly, “it is a person who makes me miserable sometimes; and I wish she would keep away⁠—I don’t want her.”

“But who, Paulina, can it be? You puzzle me much.”

“It is⁠—it is my cousin Ginevra. Every time she has leave to visit Mrs. Cholmondeley she calls here, and whenever she finds me alone she begins to talk about her admirers. Love, indeed! You should hear all she has to say about love.”