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“No, I will not have that, Margaret. I think it was obvious when the two of you were together that he was singling you out for more than mere friendship. Consider all the hints he made to you about his feelings. Well, I don’t know how his mother has turned him against you, but I am determined to find out.”

Just then, there came a knock at the bedchamber door. It was Sally, Marianne's maid, with a card in her hand. “Forgive me, my lady,” she said, “but are you at home to the Comtesse de Fontenay and her daughter? They are waiting downstairs in the hall, ma’am.”

“Indeed, we are not,” came Marianne's emphatic reply. “Be so good as to tell them that we are out and you are uncertain when we will return. As quickly as you can, Sally.”

“Thank you, Marianne,” Margaret said, breathing a sigh of relief as soon as Sally left the room. “I am in no mood for being pleasant to Mademoiselle Antoinette! I daresay she has called with the intention of rubbing my nose in her triumph.”

“Come along, get up now. Let's have no more talk of conquests and victories, especially since we do not know which campaign will win the day. You are looking brighter already and a frosty day will put a blush to those pale cheeks.”

“Not to mention my nose,” laughed Margaret, who was feeling ready to face the day at last.

Bond Street was teeming with the London crowd. Marianne made one or two purchases along the way, treating Margaret to some wildly expensive faux cherries for her bonnet, which the latter declared made her feel better just to look at them.

They soon turned into Hookham's to spend a quiet hour in search of a novel or two, but on entering the library, immediately ran into Lucy Ferrars and her sister Anne.

Margaret was particularly ill-disposed, from the state of her spirits, to be pleased with either sister, especially in light of their behaviour the previous evening. She had not been amused by their thorough want of delicacy and had no wish to spend time in the company of a pair who joined insincerity with ignorance and whose conduct she felt was particularly thoughtless. But there was nothing to be done; a conversation must be endured.

Miss Steele began by enquiring particularly after Margaret's health, but managed within the same sentence to divert the subject onto that of the gentlemen with whom they had conversed at Mrs Jennings's house.

“There now,” said Miss Steele, affectedly simpering, “I have endured such teasing from Lucy this very morning. Everybody is laughing at me about Mr Mortimer, and I cannot think why. My sister says I have made a conquest; but why she should say so, I do not understand. ‘Lord! Here comes your beau, Nancy,’ Lucy said when she saw him approaching the house to pay us a call. Said I, ‘I cannot think who you mean.’ ‘Why,’ she answered, ‘it is he who played you a pretty hand last night.’ ‘I am sure Mr Mortimer is no beau of mine,’ I declared as he knocked upon our door. And, I beg you will tell me if you ever hear such a thing talked about.”

“Mr Mortimer stayed for a full fifteen minutes,” added Lucy. “If that is not the behaviour of an ardent beau, then I am an actress on the Drury Lane stage.”

Marianne considered that this last proclamation was not very far from the truth; acting was an occupation that seemed to come far too easily to Mrs Ferrars.

“I daresay she’d have me secretly engaged to Mr Lawrence as well,” Anne went on, “but if you ask me, it's far more likely that's done already. He and the Mademoiselle de Fontenay called not five minutes later. We were quite a merry set, until they left for an outing to Hyde Park. You never saw such looks between them; smouldering hardly covers it!”

“Mr Carey singled you out for a lot of attention, Miss Dashwood,” Lucy interrupted, talking almost before her sister had finished. “I think he's still holding the torch for you and if I’m not mistaken we’ll have a wedding in London before summer. Mrs Jennings says that your beau has ever been constant and that he has waited