'There! Through your mother you stand next in the line—are heir-at-law, you see. May I live to see that day! That's all.'
The thought did not affect Felix much at the moment. He was too full of what might have been, and the 'contingency' was such a remote one! So after answering to the best of his ability whether any of his sisters were like his mother, he was glad to get out, and forget it all in croquet. His musical capacities were discovered too; but the attempt to profit by them proved quite too much for Lance, to whose brain the notes of the piano were absolute and severe pain.
A formal little note came on the ensuing morning, in which 'the Misses Hepburn'—in the third person—requested the favour of the company of Mr. Felix Underwood and his brother at luncheon. Felix felt a little stung. He could recollect warm passages between the ladies and his mother, and had been their pet long enough to wonder at this cold reception, and question whether it were not more dignified to reject advances made in such a manner; but his heart yearned towards those who had been kind to him in his youth, and he believed that his mother would have wished him to renew the intercourse, and therefore decided upon going; but it was too hot and sunny a day for Lance to walk, and Felix so entirely expected the visit to be wearisome and disagreeable, if not mortifying, that he could only resolve on it as a duty, and would not expose his brother to it.
So he plodded off alone, and a curious visit he had. It was not easy for him to guess at the sacredness of those traditions of gentility and superiority that the 'Misses Hepburn' held—not so much for their own sakes as in faithful loyalty to the parents many years dead, and to the family duty that imposed a certain careful exclusiveness on them in deference to the noble lineage they could reckon, and the head of the house, whom none of them had ever seen. He could not have guessed the warm feeling towards 'dear Mary' that had struggled so hard with the sense of duty, and had gained the victory over the soreness at the dropping of correspondence, and the idea that it was a dereliction to bend to one 'who had lowered himself,' as Mrs. Fulbert Underwood said he had.
What he saw was a tiny drawing-room, full of flowers and gimcracks, and fuller of four tall angular women, in dark dresses in the rear of the fashion, and sandy hair. They had decided in council, or rather Miss Isabella had decided for them, that since he was to be received, they would remember only his gentle blood; and therefore they shook hands with him, and the difference of the clasp alone could have shown the difference of character—the patronising, the nervous, the tenderly agitated, the hearty.
He found them better informed than the Squire had been as to the condition of the family—at least, so he presumed from the text of their inquiries. Not a word did they say of his own employment—it was to be treated as a thing not to be spoken of; but the welfare of the others was inquired after, and especially of Robina—who was the name-child of the eldest sister, the gentlest of the set, and the most in the background, quiet and tearful—pleased to hear that her godchild was at school, and as Felix emphatically said 'a very good girl,' anxious that he should take charge of 'a little token' for her.
The little token turned out to be 'Ministering Children'; and this gave Felix a further hint, which prepared him for the tone in which some of his information was received, when he had only mentioned Geraldine as gone for health's sake to the St. Faith's Sisterhood.
The ladies looked at one another, Miss Isabella cleared her throat, and he knew a warning was coming; so he quickly said, 'One of the ladies, a clergyman's widow, was very kind to my father in his illness, and is really the best friend we have left in England.'
'Your dear father was too much inclined to those specious doctrines that are only too fascinating to youth. I hope you do not outrun him.'