Allows! Fancy Frank allowing any perfection in his Lenore! Was it not possible that a little passing encomium on unusual beauty was being promoted and magnified by the mother into a serious attachment? But Lady Tyrrell was playing into her hands, and Lenore’s ecclesiastical proclivities were throwing her into the arms of the family!
It hardly seemed fair to feign sympathy, yet any adverse hint would be treason, and Mrs. Poynsett only asked innocently whether her friend had seen her son Frank.
“Oh yes, often; the handsomest of all your sons, is he not?”
“Perhaps he is now.”
“My girls rave about his beautiful brown eyes, just as you used to do, Julia, five-and-thirty years ago.”
Mrs. Poynsett was sure that whatever she had thought of Miles Charnock’s eyes five-and-thirty years ago, she had never raved about them to Susan Lorimer, but she only said, “All my boys are like their father except Charlie.”
“But Master Frank has no eyes for any one but Miss Vivian. Oh yes, I see the little jealousies; I am sorry for him; but you see it would be a shocking bad thing for a younger son like him; whereas Lory could afford it, and it would be the making of him.”
Mrs. Poynsett held her peace, and was not sorry that her visitor was called away while she was still deliberating whether to give a hint of the state of the case.
Lady Susan was, however, more aware of it than she knew; Lady Tyrrell had ‘candidly’ given her a hint that there had been ‘some nonsense about Frank Charnock,’ but that he could never afford such a marriage, even if his mother would allow it, all which she never would. Besides, he had not fallen into a satisfactory set in London—why, it was not needful to tell.
When, after the drive, Lady Tyrrell, fairly tired out by her visitor’s unfailing conversation and superabundant energy, had gone to lie down and recruit for the evening, Lady Susan pressed on Eleonora a warm invitation to the house in Yorkshire which she was renting, and where Lorimer would get as much shooting as his colonel would permit. The mention of him made Lenore blush to the ears, and say, “Dear Lady Susan, you are always so kind to me that I ought to be open with you. Don’t fancy—”