‘Nothing of the kind, Emmeline,’ he said sharply. ‘Lord Inverbroom proposed me.’
Then he turned to Alice.
‘Yes, he knows,’ he said. ‘I gave notice to him. And why do you wish I hadn’t done it? I declare I’m getting like Mr Silverdale. All the ladies are concerning themselves with me. There’s your mother saying I’ve done right, and you and Miss Propert saying I’ve done wrong. There’s no pleasing you all.’
‘And what has Miss Propert got to do with it,’ asked Lady Keeling, ‘that she disapproves of what you’ve done? She’ll be wanting to run your Stores for you next, and just because she’s been to lunch with Lord Inverbroom. I never heard of such impertinence as Miss Propert giving her opinion. You’ll have trouble with your Miss Propert. You ought to give her one of your good snubs, or dismiss her altogether. That would be far the best.’
Keeling felt as some practitioner of sortes Virgilianæ might do when he had opened at some strangely apposite text. To consult his wife about anything was like opening a book at random, a wholly irrational proceeding, but he could not but be impressed by the sudden applicability of this. His wife did not know the situation, any more than did the musty volume, but he wondered if she had not answered with a strange wisdom, wholly foreign to her.
‘Now you have given your opinion, Emmeline,’ he said, ‘and you must allow somebody else to talk. I want to know why Alice disapproves.’
Alice stitched violently at the slipper.
‘Mr Silverdale will be so sorry,’ she said. ‘He drops in there sometimes for a rubber of bridge, for he thinks that it is such a good thing to show that a clergyman can be a man of the world too.’
Keeling rose: this was altogether too much for him.
‘Well, we’ve wasted enough time talking about it all,’ he said, ‘if that’s all the reason I’m to hear.’