‘However unconventional,’ said Merton, smiling. He felt rather as if he were being treated like a quack doctor, to whom people (if foolish enough) appeal only as the last desperate resource.
The lady who filled, and amply filled, the client’s chair, Mrs. Malory, of Upwold in Yorkshire, was a widow, obviously, a widow indeed. ‘In weed’ was an unworthy calembour which flashed through Merton’s mind, since Mrs. Malory’s undying regret for her lord (a most estimable man for a coal owner) was explicitly declared, or rather was blazoned abroad, in her costume. Mrs. Mallory, in fact, was what is derisively styled ‘Early Victorian’—‘Middle’ would have been, historically, more accurate. Her religion was mildly Evangelical; she had been brought up on the
Memoirs of the Fairchild Family, by Mrs. Sherwood, tempered by Miss Yonge and the Waverley Novels. On these principles she had trained her family. The result was that her sons had not yet brought the family library, and the family Romneys and Hoppners, to Christie’s. Not one of them was a director of any company, and the name of Malory had not yet been distinguished by decorating the annals of the Courts of Bankruptcy or of Divorce. In short, a family more deplorably not ‘up to date,’ and more ‘out of the swim’ could scarcely be found in England.
Such, and of such connections, was the lady, fair, faded, with mildly aquiline features, and an aspect at once distinguished and dowdy, who appealed to Merton. She sought him in what she, at least, regarded as the interests of her eldest daughter, an heiress under the will of a maternal uncle. Merton had met the young lady, who looked like a portrait of her mother in youth. He knew that Miss Malory, now ‘wrapped up in’ her betrothed lover, would, in a few years, be equally absorbed in ‘her boys.’ She was pretty, blonde, dull, good, and cast by Providence for the part of one of the best of mothers, and the despair of what man soever happened to sit next her at a dinner party. Such women are the safeguards of society—though sneered at by the frivolous as ‘British Matrons.’
‘I have laid the case before the—where I always take my troubles,’ said Mrs. Malory, ‘and I have not felt restrained from coming to consult you. When I permitted my daughter’s engagement (of course after carefully examining the young man’s worldly position)
I was not aware of what I know now. Matilda met him at a visit to some neighbours—he really is very attractive, and very attentive—and it was not till we came to London for the season that I heard the stories about him. Some of them have been pointed out to me, in print, in the dreadful French newspapers, others came to me in anonymous letters. As far as a mother may, I tried to warn Matilda, but there are subjects on which one can hardly speak to a girl. The Vidame, in fact,’ said Mrs. Malory, blushing, ‘is celebrated—I should say infamous—both in France and Italy, Poland too, as what they call un homme aux bonnes fortunes. He has caused the break-up of several families. Mr. Merton, he is a rake,’ whispered the lady, in some confusion.
‘He is still young; he may reform,’ said Merton, ‘and no doubt a pure affection will be the saving of him.’
‘So Matilda believes, but, though a Protestant—his ancestors having left France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nancy—Nantes I mean—I am certain that he is not under conviction.’
‘Why does he call himself Vidame, “the Vidame de la Lain”?’ asked Merton.
‘It is an affectation,’ said Mrs. Malory. ‘None of his family used the title in England, but he has been much on the Continent, and has lands in France; and, I suppose, has romantic ideas. He is as much French as English, more I am afraid. The wickedness of that country! And I fear it has affected ours. Even now—I am not a scandal-monger, and I hope for the best—but even last winter he was talked about,’ Mrs.