“Mrs Phoebe, my dear, may I beg of you to do me the favour to let Madam know that my niece, my Lady Delawarr, is much disordered in her health?”
“Certainly, my Lady Betty; I am grieved to hear it.”
“Very much so, as ’tis feared; and Sir Richard hath asked me thither to visit her, and see after matters a little while she is laid by. I purpose to go thither this next week, but I would not do so without paying my respects to Madam, for which honour I trust to wait on her to-morrow. Indeed, my dear—and if you will mention it to Madam, you will do me a service—Sir Richard’s letter is not without some importunity that should my niece be laid aside for any time, as her physician fears, I would remove altogether, and make my home with them.”
“Indeed, Madam, I will tell my mother all about it.”
“I thank you, my dear; ’twill be a kindness. Of course, I would not like to leave without Madam’s concurrence.”
“That you will have,” quietly said Mrs Dorothy.
“Indeed, so I hope,” returned Lady Betty. “I dare say Mrs Phoebe here at least does not know that when my nephew Sir Richard was young, after his mother died—my poor sister Penelope—he was bred up wholly in my care, so that he looks on me rather as his mother than his aunt, and ’tis but natural that his thoughts should turn to me in this trouble.”
“You must have been a young aunt, my Lady Betty,” remarked Mrs Dorothy.
“Truly, but twelve years elder than my nephew,” said Lady Betty, with a smile.
“Clarissa would have told us that, without waiting to be asked,” laughed Mrs Jane. “How are the girls, my Lady Betty?”