Instead of replying, Aunt Temperance lighted a candle and calmly looked her nephew over.
“Well!” said she, as the result of her inspection, “if I were donned in grass-green velvet, guarded o’ black, with silver tags, and a silver-bossed girdle, and gloves o’ Spanish leather, I should fancy I’d got a bit o’ butter on my bread. Maybe your honour likes it thick? Promotes effusing of bile, that doth. Pray you, how fare your Papistical friends this even?”
Lady Louvaine looked up and listened for the answer.
“You set it down they be Papistical somewhat too soon, Aunt,” said Aubrey a little irritably. “Mr Winter and his friends, if they be whom you hit at, be gone away into the country, and I have not seen them this some time.”
The next question put to him was the one that Aubrey was expecting, with an expectation which caused his irritability.
“What said my Lady Oxford to the matter, Aubrey?”
“Truly, Madam, I have not yet made the inquiration. My Lady is at this time full of business, and seeing my friends were away, I thought you should not require haste.”
Aubrey’s conscience stirred a little uneasily, and he said to it, “Be quiet! I have not told any falsehood.”
“I would not have you to chafe your Lady, if she have no time to listen,” said Lady Louvaine, with a disappointed look: “but indeed, Aubrey, the matter must be seen to, and not done by halves, moreover.”
A rap at the door preceded Charity, who came to announce Mrs Abbott—a ceremony always used at the White Bear, but entirely unnecessary in the eyes of the lady of the Angel.