“Let me take baby; it’s impossible to hold the two of them, they are so strong,” said the proud mother. “Oh, yes, he came home early yesterday.”
“Have you seen him?”
“He was here yesterday, with her ladyship; and I lunched there to-day. The letter came, you know, in time to stop the Merediths. They don’t go till to-morrow, so you will meet them after all. Sir George is wild about it, but Lady Lufton would have her way. You never saw her in such a state as she is.”
“Good spirits, eh?”
“I should think so. All Lord Lufton’s horses are coming, and he’s to be here till March.”
“Till March!”
“So her ladyship whispered to me. She could not conceal her triumph at his coming. He’s going to give up Leicestershire this year altogether. I wonder what has brought it all about?” Mark knew very well what had brought it about; he had been made acquainted, as the reader has also, with the price at which Lady Lufton had purchased her son’s visit. But no one had told Mrs. Robarts that the mother had made her son a present of five thousand pounds.
“She’s in a good humour about everything now,” continued Fanny; “so you need say nothing at all about Gatherum Castle.”
“But she was very angry when she first heard it; was she not?”
“Well, Mark, to tell the truth, she was; and we had quite a scene there up in her own room up-stairs,—Justinia and I. She had heard something else that she did not like at the same time; and then—but you know her way. She blazed up quite hot.”