“I should think he would have been—a kind, good, genial man—just the man to be adored by his own family.”
“Exactly; and so he was. I do not remember that I ever heard an unkind word from him. There was not a harsh tone in his voice. And he was generous as the day.” Lucy, we have said, was not generally demonstrative, but now, on this subject, and with this absolute stranger, she became almost eloquent.
“I do not wonder that you should feel his loss, Miss Robarts.”
“Oh, I do feel it. Mark is the best of brothers, and, as for Fanny, she is too kind and too good to me. But I had always been specially my father’s friend. For the last year or two we had lived so much together!”
“He was an old man when he died, was he not?”
“Just seventy, my lord.”
“Ah, then he was old. My mother is only fifty, and we sometimes call her the old woman. Do you think she looks older than that? We all say that she makes herself out to be so much more ancient than she need do.”
“Lady Lufton does not dress young.”
“That is it. She never has, in my memory. She always used to wear black when I first recollect her. She has given that up now; but she is still very sombre; is she not?”
“I do not like ladies to dress very young, that is, ladies of—of—”