The reception I had met chilled and disappointed me. I felt that Mrs. Poyntz was changed, and in her change the whole house seemed changed. The very chairs looked civilly unfriendly, as if preparing to turn their backs on me. However, I was not in the false position of an intruder; I had been summoned; it was for Mrs. Poyntz to speak first, and I waited quietly for her to do so.
She finished the careful folding of her work, and then laid it at rest in the drawer of the table at which she sat. Having so done, she turned to me, and said,—
“By the way, I ought to have introduced to you my young guest, Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. You would like him. He has talents,—not showy, but solid. He will succeed in public life.”
“So that young man is Mr. Ashleigh Sumner? I do not wonder that Miss Ashleigh rejected him.”
I said this, for I was nettled, as well as surprised, at the coolness with which a lady who had professed a friendship for me mentioned that fortunate young gentleman, with so complete an oblivion of all the antecedents that had once made his name painful to my ear.
In turn, my answer seemed to nettle Mrs. Poyntz.
“I am not so sure that she did reject; perhaps she rather misunderstood him; gallant compliments are not always proposals of marriage. However that be, his spirits were not much damped by Miss Ashleigh’s disdain, nor his heart deeply smitten by her charms; for he is now very happy, very much attached to another young lady, to whom he proposed three days ago, at Lady Delafield’s, and not to make a mystery of what all our little world will know before tomorrow, that young lady is my daughter Jane.”
“Were I acquainted with Mr. Sumner, I should offer to him my sincere congratulations.”
Mrs. Poyntz resumed, without heeding a reply more complimentary to Miss Jane than to the object of her choice,—
“I told you that I meant Jane to marry a rich country gentleman, and Ashleigh Sumner is the very country gentleman I had then in my thoughts. He is cleverer and more ambitious than I could have hoped; he will be a minister some day, in right of his talents, and a peer, if he wishes it, in right of his lands. So that matter is settled.”