Perceiving the agitation of Hilda's face, Edwin added in a lower voice to his wife:
"I thought I wouldn't say anything until it was settled, for fear you might be let in for a disappointment. He'll buy it if I leave fifteen hundred on mortgage. So I shall. But of course he wanted her to have a good look at it first."
"How unfair I am!" thought Hilda, as she made some banal remark to Miss Höst. "Don't I know I can always rely on him?"
"Mr. Clayhanger made us promise not to----" Miss Höst began to explain.
"It was just like him!" Hilda interrupted, smiling.
She had a strong desire to jump at Edwin and kiss him. She was saved. Her grandiose plan would proceed. The house sold, Edwin was bound to secure Ladderedge Hall against no matter what rival; and he would do it. But it was the realisation of her power over her husband that gave her the profoundest joy.
About an hour later, when everyone felt that the party was over, the guests, reluctant to leave, and excited afresh by the news that the house had changed hands during the revel, were all assembled in the drawing-room. A few were seated on the chairs which, with the tables, had been pushed against the walls. George had squatted on the carpet rolled up into the hearth, where the fire was extinct; he was not wearing his green shade. The rest were grouped around Manna Höst in the middle of the room.
Miss Höst, the future mistress of the abode, was now more than ever the centre of regard. Apparently as fresh as at the start, and picking delicately at a sweet biscuit, the flushed blonde stood answering questions about her views on England and especially on the Five Towns. She was quite sure of herself, and utterly charming in her confidence. Annunciata Fearns envied her acutely. The other women were a little saddened by the thought of all the disillusions that inevitably lay before her. It was touching to see her glance at Tom Swetnam, convinced that she understood him to the core, and in him all the psychology of his sex.
"Everybody knows," she was saying, "that the English are the finest nation, and I think the Five Towns are much more English than London. That's why I adore the Five Towns. You do not know how English you are here. It makes me laugh because you are so English, and you do not know it. I love you."
"You're flattering us," said Stephen Cheswardine, enchanted with the girl.