“Not the least harm in the world, but just the reverse. Whatever may come of this, my wish is that the truth should be told scrupulously on all sides; the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Magna est veritas,” said Miss Dunstable. “The Bishop of Barchester taught me as much Latin as that at Chaldicotes; and he did add some more, but there was a long word, and I forgot it.”
“The bishop was quite right, my dear, I’m sure. But if you go to your Latin, I’m lost. As we were just now saying, my brother’s pecuniary affairs are in a very bad state. He has a beautiful property of his own, which has been in the family for I can’t say how many centuries—long before the Conquest, I know.”
“I wonder what my ancestors were then?”
“It does not much signify to any of us,” said Mrs. Harold Smith, with a moral shake of her head, “what our ancestors were; but it’s a sad thing to see an old property go to ruin.”
“Yes, indeed; we none of us like to see our property going to ruin, whether it be old or new. I have some of that sort of feeling already, although mine was only made the other day out of an apothecary’s shop.”
“God forbid that I should ever help you to ruin it,” said Mrs. Harold Smith. “I should be sorry to be the means of your losing a ten-pound note.”
“Magna est veritas, as the dear bishop said,” exclaimed Miss Dunstable. “Let us have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as we agreed just now.”
Mrs. Harold Smith did begin to find that the task before her was difficult. There was a hardness about Miss Dunstable when matters of business were concerned on which it seemed almost impossible to make any impression. It was not that she had evinced any determination to refuse the tender of Mr. Sowerby’s hand; but she was so painfully resolute not to have dust thrown in her eyes! Mrs. Harold Smith had commenced with a mind fixed upon avoiding what she called humbug; but this sort of humbug had become so prominent a part of her usual rhetoric, that she found it very hard to abandon it.
“And that’s what I wish,” said she. “Of course my chief object is to secure my brother’s happiness.”