"Don't call Lady Totness people, Mrs. Wyburn! Think what a disagreeable, insincere woman she is—not a bit femme du monde, and so exceptionally stupid and spiteful!"
Harry stayed with her for an hour, having tea, chatting, telling her stories against every one she didn't like, and speaking with a kind of tender and admiring familiarity of both Valentia and Romer, in a way that at once reassured and flattered her.
Finally, she actually found herself begging Harry to use his influence with the young couple to be less frivolous and mondains, and not to be always going out, which he promised to do. She even confided to him her great wish that they had two or three children, which would steady them down, and he warmly agreed with her, but said that he felt that on that subject it was, perhaps, hardly for him to interfere.
Of course he confided in her, in his turn, how frightfully hard up one was, with no one buying pictures, and outsiders winning all the big races after having no earthly chance on any form they had shown that season. Mrs. Wyburn positively tried to talk racing with him for a minute or two—rather pathetically—but soon got out of her depth and fell back on Art. She said she thought, candidly, that Harry's portrait of his cousin was a pity.
They parted excellent friends, she even asking him as a favour not to tell Romer the reason of his visit. To Valentia he might mention it, as Mrs. Wyburn thought it might be a lesson to her.
Harry professed, at first, some little scruple on the point. He scarcely liked, he said, the idea of concealing it from Romer. They always told each other everything. But Mrs. Wyburn was afraid of her son's anger—which she could not endure, unless she was in the right—and of appearing ridiculously meddling. Harry owned that her conduct might seem rather malicious and absurd. At last he consented, and it was agreed that neither of them should ever say anything about it to Romer at all.
It is scarcely necessary to say that Harry kept his promise of silence to the letter. Had he not done so the story would at least have had the interest of novelty, for Romer had never yet heard anything about the expedition to the British Museum, and he never did.
A week or two later, when Mrs. Newhaven's ball at the Grafton Galleries was described in the paper, Mrs. Wyburn, who read the account, observed that there was no reference whatever to quadrilles of various nationalities—Egyptian or otherwise; and she rather wondered at the omission. But it did not occur to her to suppose that this portion of the entertainment had been entirely imaginary—a lurid figment of Harry's vivid fancy and fertile invention.
He left, it must be said, on the old lady a lasting impression—by no means an unfavourable one. Even when she had reason to grow seriously anxious again on the same subject, she never could bring herself in her own mind to blame Harry—she could not at heart think ill of him. She was only extremely angry with Romer and Valentia.