She is only
blinded by sisterly affection.'
'I don't think I can go there again,' said Gillian, 'after what she
said about you.'
'Nonsense!' said her mother. 'Don't be as bad as Constance in trying
to make me angry by telling me all poor Dolly's grumblings.'
'Follow your mother's example, Gillian,' said Lord Rotherwood, 'and, if
possible, never hear, certainly never attend to, what any one says of
you behind your back.'
'Is said to have said of you, you should add, Rotherwood,' put in the
colonel. 'It is a decree worse than eavesdropping.'
'Oh, Regie!' exclaimed his sister.
'Well, not perhaps for your own honour and conscience, but the keyhole
is a more trustworthy medium than the reporter.'
'That's a strong way of stating it, but, at any rate, the keyhole has
no temper nor imagination, or prejudice of its own,' said Lady
Merrifield.
'No, and as far as it goes, it enables you to judge of the frame in
which the words, even if correctly reported, were spoken,' added
Colonel Mohun.
'The moral of which is,' said Lord Rotherwood, drolly, 'that Gillian is
not to take notice of anyone's observations upon her unless she has
heard them through the keyhole.'
'And so one would never hear them at all.'
'Q. E. D.,' said Lord Rotherwood. 'And now, Lily, do you. ever sing
the two evening-hymns. Ken and Keble, now, as the family used to do on
Sundays at the Old Court, long ere the days of 'Hymns Ancient and
Modern'?
'Don't we?' said Lady Merrifield.
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