She seemed to realize how it must all jar on Hector. To know his loved one belonged to this worthy grocer—to understand the hopelessness of the position!
Anne was proud of her family and her old name. It was grief, too, to think that after Hector the title would go to Evermond Le Mesurier, the unmarried and dissolute uncle, if he survived his nephew, and then would die out altogether. There would be no more Baron Bracondales of Bracondale, unless Hector chose to marry and have sons. Oh, life was a topsy-turvy affair at the best of times, she sighed to herself.
Just before the ladies left the table, Josiah had announced their intended visit to Beechleigh, and his wife's relationship to Sir Patrick Fitzgerald and the old Earl Borringdon.
It came as a thunderclap to Lady Anningford. This accounted for Hector's eagerness to obtain the invitation—accounted for Theodora's exceeding look of breeding—accounted for many things.
She only trusted her mother had not heard the news also. So much better to leave her in her fool's paradise about Morella.
If Lady Harrowfield knew, she said nothing about it. She absolutely ignored Theodora, as though she had never shaken hands with her in her own house the night before. Theodora wondered at her manners—she did not yet know Mayfair.
The conversation turned upon some of the wonderful charities they were all interested in, and Theodora thought how good and kind of them to help the poor and crippled. And she said some gentle, sympathetic things to a lady who was near her. And Anne thought to herself how sweet and beautiful her nature must be, and it made her sadder and sadder.
Presently they all began to discuss the ball at Harrowfield House. It had been too lovely, they said, and Lady Harrowfield joined in with one of her sharp thrusts.
"Of course it could not be just as one would have wished. I was obliged to ask all sorts of people I had never even heard of," she said. "The usual grabbing for invitations, you know, to see the Royalties. Really, the quaint creatures who came up the stairs! I almost laughed in their faces once or twice."
"But don't you like to feel what pleasure you gave them, the poor things?" Theodora said, quite simply, without the least sarcasm. "You see, I know you gave them pleasure, because my husband and I were some of them—and we enjoyed it, oh, so much!"