‘I’ll go down to mother,’ she said, taking refuge in the other one.
‘Do, darling,’ said Catherine, busy being buttoned up.
And Virginia, going down into the drawing-room, found a young man in brown leather there, being talked to by Mrs. Colquhoun, who turned round quickly when she came in, and whose face changed from eager to rather disagreeable, she thought, when he saw her.
‘This, Virginia, my child,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun with even more than her usual briskness, ‘is your mother’s old friend Mr. Monckton. Mr. Monckton, this is my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Stephen Colquhoun. Conceive its falling to my lot to make you two acquainted! I should have thought you would have lisped together in infant numbers, tumbled about like puppies together on lawns, been nursed upon the self-same hill. I hope, Mr. Monckton, you admire with me the poet I am quoting from?’
No; young people could never remain shy long when she was there. Yet presently she had to admit that with these two, anyhow, it was heavy going. They couldn’t be got to talk to each other. Dear little Virginia, of course, never did go in much for small chat, and Mr. Monckton’s disposition appeared after all not to correspond with his glowing exterior. He was as silent as if he had been puny and sallow. A picture of splendid youth, standing there on the hearth-rug—he wouldn’t sit down, he wouldn’t have coffee, he wouldn’t smoke, he wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t do anything—he seemed to have really nothing in him. Except perhaps obstinacy; and possibly a hasty temper. Who and what he was, and why Mrs. Cumfrit should be friends with him, she couldn’t imagine. To all her questions—of course, tactfully put—he only made evasive answers, chiefly in monosyllables. Little Virginia was as silent as he was. Indeed, she seemed to take a dislike to him from the first. Later on, describing the meeting to her friends, Mrs. Colquhoun was fond of dwelling on the unerring instinct of that dear child.
‘We ought to be starting,’ said Christopher, looking at his wrist-watch.
It was intolerable to him being there alone with these two women, in the house that used to be Catherine’s, faced by the girl who was, he was certain, the living image of George, and who stood watching him with great critical eyes while the old lady enfiladed him with a non-stopping fire of God knew what.
‘I wish you’d tell your mother,’ he said, turning with a quick movement of impatience to Virginia.
She stared at him a moment without answering. Then she said slowly, ‘My mother will come when she is ready.’
‘Hoity toity,’ Christopher all but said aloud; and added under his breath, ‘young Miss.’