"Sam, run round and see if your father's in the office. He'll be home to dinner, I know. Molly, do be quiet with your sister. I never see such a girl as you are for bothering. You didn't come down about business, did you, John?" And then Kenneby explained to her that he had been summoned by Dockwrath as to the matter of this Orley Farm trial. While he was doing so, Sam returned to say that his father had stepped out, but would be back in half an hour, and Mrs. Dockwrath, finding it impossible to make use of her company sitting-room, took her old lover into the family apartment which they all ordinarily occupied.
"You can sit down there at any rate without it all crunching under you, up to nothing." And she emptied for him as she spoke the seat of an old well-worn horse-hair bottomed arm-chair. "As to them tin things I wouldn't trust myself on one of them; and so I told him, angry as it made him. But now about poor Lady Mason—. Sam and Molly, you go into the garden, there's good children. They is so ready with their ears, John; and he contrives to get everything out of 'em. Now do tell me about this."
Kenneby could not help thinking that the love match between Miriam and her husband had not turned out in all respects well, and I fear that he derived from the thought a certain feeling of consolation. "He" was spoken about in a manner that did not betoken unfailing love and perfect confidence. Perhaps Miriam was at this moment thinking that she might have done better with her youth and her money! She was thinking of nothing of the kind. Her mind was one that dwelt on the present, not on the past. She was unhappy about her furniture, unhappy about the frocks of those four younger children, unhappy that the loaves of bread went faster and faster every day, very unhappy now at the savageness with which her husband prosecuted his anger against Lady Mason. But it did not occur to her to be unhappy because she had not become Mrs. Kenneby.
Mrs. Dockwrath had more to tell in the matter than had Kenneby, and when the elder of the children who were at home had been disposed of she was not slow to tell it. "Isn't it dreadful, John, to think that they should come against her now, and the will all settled as it was twenty year ago? But you won't say anything against her; will you now, John? She was always a good friend to you; wasn't she? Though it wasn't much use; was it?" It was thus that she referred to the business before them, and to the love passages of her early youth at the same time.
"It's a very dreadful affair," said Kenneby, very solemnly; "and the more I think of it the more dreadful it becomes."
"But you won't say anything against her, will you? You won't go over to his side; eh, John?"
"I don't know much about sides," said he.
"He'll get himself into trouble with it; I know he will. I do so wish you'd tell him, for he can't hurt you if you stand up to him. If I speak,—Lord bless you, I don't dare to call my soul my own for a week afterwards."
"Is he so very—"
"Oh, dreadful, John. He's bid me never speak a word to her. But for all that I used till she went away down to The Cleeve yonder. And what do you think they say now? And I do believe it too. They say that Sir Peregrine is going to make her his lady. If he does that it stands to reason that Dockwrath and Joseph Mason will get the worst of it. I'm sure I hope they will; only he'll be twice as hard if he don't make money by it in some way."