“Mathilde, what is the name of your young friend?”
There was a little pause before Mathilde answered that she was sorry, but she didn’t know.
Mrs. Farron turned to her husband and made a little gesture to indicate that this ignorance on the girl’s part did not bear out his theory; but she saw that he did not admit it, that he clung still to his impression. “And Vincent’s impressions—” she said to herself as she went in to dress.
CHAPTER III
Mr. Lanley was ruffled as he left his daughter’s drawing-room.
“As if I had wanted her to marry at eighteen,” he said to himself; and he took his hat crossly from Pringle and set it hard on his head at the slight angle which he preferred. Then reflecting that Pringle was not in any way involved, he unbent slightly, and said something that sounded like:
“Haryer, Pringle?”
Pringle, despite his stalwart masculine appearance, had in speaking a surprisingly high, squeaky voice.
“I keep my health, thank you, sir,” he said. “Anna has been somewhat ailing.” Anna was his wife, to whom he usually referred as “Mrs. Pringle”; but he made an exception in speaking to Mr. Lanley, for she had once been the Lanleys’ kitchen-maid. “Your car, sir?”
No, Mr. Lanley was walking—walking, indeed, more quickly than usual under the stimulus of annoyance.