Miss Winmarleigh kept up a constant chatter of commonplaces, to which, when he replied at all, he gave random answers.
And every moment she became more annoyed and uneasy.
She had known Hector since she was a child. Their places adjoined in the country, and she saw him constantly when there. Her stolid vanity had never permitted the suggestion to come to her that he had always been completely indifferent to her. She intended to marry him. His mother shared her wishes. They were continually thrown together, and the thought of her as a probable ending to his life when all pleasures should be over had often entered his head.
Before he met Theodora, if he had ever analyzed his views about Morella, they probably would have been that she was a safe bore with a great many worldly advantages. A woman who you could be sure would not take a lover a few years after you had married her, and whom he would probably marry if she were still free when the time came.
His flittings from one pretty matron to another had not caused her grave anxieties. He could not marry them, and he never talked with girls or possible rivals. So she had always felt safe and certain that fate would ultimately make him her husband.
But this was different—he had never been like this before. And uneasiness grabbed at her well-regulated heart.
"Ah, there is my mother!" he exclaimed, at last, with such evident relief that Morella began to feel spiteful.
They made their way to where Lady Bracondale was standing. She beamed upon them like a pleased pussy-cat. It looked so suitable to see them thus together!