Gillian came down to dinner quite pale, and to Aunt Ada’s kind ‘Well, Gillian?’ she could only repeat, ‘It is horrid.’
‘It is hard to lose all the pretty double wedding,’ said Aunt Ada.
‘Gillian does not mean that,’ hastily put in Miss Mohun.
‘Oh no,’ said Gillian; ‘that would be worse than anything.’
‘So you think,’ said Aunt Jane; ‘but believe those who have gone through it all, my dear, when the wrench is over, one feels the benefit.’
Gillian shook her head, and drank water. Her aunts went on talking, for they thought it better that she should get accustomed to the prospect; and, moreover, they were so much excited that they could hardly have spoken of anything else. Aunt Jane wondered if Phyllis’s betrothed were a brother of Mr. Underwood of St. Matthew’s, Whittingtown, with whom she had corresponded about the consumptive home; and Aunt Ada regretted the not having called on Lady Liddesdale when she had spent some weeks at Rockstone, and consoled herself by recollecting that Lord Rotherwood would know all about the family. She had already looked it out in the Peerage, and discovered that Lord Francis Cunningham Somerville was the only younger son, that his age was twenty-nine, and that he had three sisters, all married, as well as his elder brother, who had children enough to make it improbable that Alethea would ever be Lady Liddesdale. She would have shown Gillian the record, but received the ungracious answer, ‘I hate swells.’
‘Let her alone, Ada,’ said Aunt Jane; ‘it is a very sore business. She will be better by and by.’
There ensued a little discussion how the veil at Silverfold was to be hunted up, or if Gillian and her aunt must go to do so.
‘Can you direct Miss Vincent?’ asked Miss Mohun.
‘No, I don’t think I could; besides, I don’t like to set any one to poke and meddle in mamma’s drawers.’