“No, thank you,” he rejoined with laboured emphasis. “I’ve had enough of travel with Letty. She is all for sights and sunsets, and hideous old pictures and damp churches. She has no fun or go, no what you call joie de vivre. As for mixing in society, she is a fish out of water, and without tact or sense. Why you yourself heard the story she related at dinner,—one of Lady Slater’s worst—and that without turning a hair!”
“It showed the poor child’s innocence,” rejoined his mother, “and the sort of people with whom you allowed her to associate.”
“Any way—it will be talked of for the next ten years! and I’ll tell you what, mum,” he added, nodding his head and looking down at her with his hard, sullen eyes. “I find I’ve made a most infernal mistake!”
“Well, Hugo, remember that I warned you; the wife to have suited you, would have been a smart young widow, who knew her way about, who was clever and ambitious, and could hold her own. I must confess I am sorry for Letty!”
“Bah! she’s just a little shivering idiot.”
“I expect her aunt drove her into the marriage. Oh, Hugo, what an awful woman; so thrusting, managing, and overbearing. For all her good birth, and being first cousin to the Marquis of Camberwell, she is not a lady.” She had not forgotten their passage-at-arms, and repeated with conviction, “No, she is not!”
“But a regular old campaigner! I believe poor Fenchurch can’t call his soul his own. She’d sell the hunters under him without winking, and allows him a shilling a week for baccy. I won’t have her over here prying and picking. I’m not a mean chap, nor stingy, but when I put her in the brougham, I saw that she had a hamper of plants from the hothouse, the best of the spaniel pups, and a china jar. She told me, with a grin, she begged it of dearest Letty, who had two. She won’t come here again, I bet a thousand pounds!”
But an experienced acquaintance would have backed Mrs. Fenchurch,—and won!