“I can’t imagine Captain Cursiter so far forgetting himself as to tell any news,” said Lady Dysart; “but perhaps he makes an exception in your favour.”
“They’re to go to Aldershot in a fortnight,” said Christopher.
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed his mother, with an irrepressible look at Pamela, who was sitting on the floor in the window, taking a thorn out of Max’s spatulate paw. “In a fortnight? I wonder how Mr. Hawkins will like that? Evelyn said that Miss Coppard told her the marriage was to come off when the regiment went back to England.”
Christopher grunted unsympathetically, and Pamela continued her researches for the thorn.
“Well,” resumed Lady Dysart, “I, for one, shall not regret them. Selfish and second-rate!”
“Which is which?” asked Christopher, eliminating any tinge of interest or encouragement from his voice. He was quite aware that his mother was in this fashion avenging the slaughter of the hope that she had secretly nourished about Captain Cursiter, and, being in a perturbed frame of mind, it annoyed him.
“I think your friend is the most self-centred, ungenial man I have ever known,” replied Lady Dysart, in sonorous denunciation, “and if Mr. Hawkins is not second-rate, his friends are, which comes to the same thing! And, by the by, how was it that he went away before Captain Cursiter? Did not they come together?”
“Miss Mullen and Mrs. Lambert gave him a lift,” said Christopher, uncommunicatively; “I believe they overtook him on his way here.”
Lady Dysart meditated, with her dark eyebrows drawn into a frown.
“I think that girl will make a very great mistake if she begins a flirtation with Mr. Hawkins again,” she said presently; “there has been quite enough talk about her already in connection with her marriage.” Lady Dysart untied her bonnet strings as if with a need of more air, and flung them back over each shoulder. In the general contrariety of things, it was satisfactory to find an object so undeniably deserving of reprobation as the new Mrs. Lambert. “I call her a thorough adventuress!” she continued. “She came down here, determined to marry some one, and as Mr. Hawkins escaped from her, she just snatched at the next man she could find!”