"Because I didn't think uncle was so silly!" Gertrude blurted out. "At least, I don't mean that exactly; don't misunderstand me, dear Mrs. Ashurst, but I never thought that uncle would marry again at all.--Such an idea never entered our heads, did it, Maude?" But Maude declining to play chorus, Gertrude continued: "And if I had thought of such a thing, I should always have set uncle down as marrying some one more his own age, and--and that kind of thing!"
"There is certainly a great disparity of years between them," said Mrs. Ashurst, with a sigh. "I trust that won't work to the disadvantage of my poor dear girl!"
"I don't think you need fear that, dear old friend!" said Maude; and then thinking that her tone of voice might have been hard, she laid her hand on the old lady's shoulder, and added, "Miss Ash--I mean Mrs. Creswell, you know, is wise beyond her years! She has already had the management of a large household, which, as I understand, she conducted excellently; and even did she show a few shortcomings, uncle is the last man to notice them!"
"Yes, my dear, I know; but I didn't mean that! I was selfishly thinking whether Marian had done rightly in accepting a man so much older than herself. She did it for my sake, poor child--she did it for my sake!" And the old lady burst into tears.
"Don't cry, dear!" said Gertrude. "You are not to blame, I'm sure, whatever has happened."
"How can you make yourself so perfectly ridiculous, Gertrude?" said strong-minded Maude. "No one is to blame about anything! And, my dear Mrs. Ashurst, I don't think, if I were you, I should look upon your daughter's present proceeding as such an act of self-sacrifice. Depend upon it she is very well pleased at her new dignity and position." Maude knew that the Creswells were only "new people," but she could not sit by and hear them patronised by a schoolmaster's widow.
"Well, my dear, very likely," said the old lady meekly; "though she might have been a baronet's lady if she had only chosen. I'm sure young Sir Joseph Attride would have proposed to her, with a little more encouragement; and though my poor husband always said he had pudding in his head instead of brains, that wouldn't have been any just cause or impediment. You never heard about Sir Joseph, Maude?"
"No; Miss Ashurst never spoke to us of any of her conquests," said Maude, with something of a sneer.
"Well, ray dear, Marian was never one to say much, you know; but I'm sure she might have done as well as any girl in the county, for the matter of that. There was Sir Joseph, and young Mr. Peacock before he went up to live in London, and a young German who was over here to learn English--Burckhardt his name was, and I think his friends were counts, or something of that kind, in their own country--oh, quite grand, I assure you!"
"I wonder whether uncle knows of all these former rivals?" asked Gertrude.