Presently, indeed, there was a tone that made Lady Kenton say, ‘People do scent things very fast. It must be some one wanting to apply for patronage.’
‘I am a little afraid it is that sister-in-law of his,’ said Miss Lang, lowering her voice. ‘I saw her once at the choral festival—and—and I wasn’t delighted.’
‘Perhaps I had better come another day,’ said Lady Kenton. ‘We seem to be almost listening.’
Even as the lady was taking her leave, the words were plainly heard—
‘Artful, mean-spirited, time-serving viper as you are, bent on dragging him down to destruction!’
CHAPTER VII
MORTONS AND MANNERS
‘Shillyshally,’ quoth Mrs. Charles Morton over her brother-in-law’s letter. ‘Does he think a mother is to be put off like that?’
So she arrayed herself in panoply of glittering jet and nodding plumes, and set forth by train to Hurminster to assert her rights, and those of her children, armed with a black sunshade, and three pocket-handkerchiefs. She did not usually wear mourning, but this was an assertion of her nobility.
In his sitting-room, wearing his old office coat, pale, wearied, and worried, the Frank Morton, ‘who could be turned round the finger of any one who knew how,’ appeared at her summons.
She met him with an effusive kiss of congratulation. ‘Dearest Frank! No, I must not say Frank! I could hardly believe my eyes when I read the news.’