"Well, she's pretty enough to make a disturbance anywhere," said the old lord, whose kindly eye for youth and beauty was not dimmed by his eighty years. "And if there is anything going on, I know I can trust you to tell me all about it."
"There it is again," replied Mrs. Graham. "I'm getting the reputation of a tale-bearer, and there's nothing I hate more. Still, I think you ought to know." And she told him who Virginia was, and what was happening because she was what she was.
The old man grew rather serious as the story was unfolded to him. "Edward Clinton was always headstrong," he said, "but it's unlike him to quarrel with Dick. I think he ought to have waited to see what she was like first."
"Of course he ought," said Mrs. Graham. "I've no patience with him. He had the impudence to take me to task for asking her to dinner, and Jim and Cicely to meet her. But he didn't get much change out of me."
"You told him what you thought about him—what?"
"I told him what I thought about her, and left him to infer the rest. There's nothing wrong about her, if she did marry Lord George Dubec, and all the rest of it. I like her, and I told him so. And if I can't ask my own son and daughter-in-law to meet whom I like in my own house without being hauled over the coals by Mr. Clinton—well, he'll be expecting me to ask him what I'm to wear next."
"He couldn't improve on that," said Lord Meadshire, with an appreciative glance at her pretty gown of pale blue silk under brown net.
"Thank you," returned Mrs. Graham. "I hate clothes, but I can get myself up if I'm flattered enough beforehand. Cicely does that for me. I've no complaint to make of her as a daughter-in-law."
"Well, you had better introduce me to Lady George," said Lord Meadshire. "She must be asked to Kemsale on Monday. And I'll find an opportunity of dropping a word of common sense into Edward's ear, eh?"
"It will go out at the other. There's nothing to stop it," said Mrs. Graham. "But it will be a good thing to show him he's not going to have it all his own way."