She said this as though she really believed that she possessed such an organ. Mrs. Jersey always said that a heart was lacking in Miss Bull's maiden breast: but certainly the way in which the old woman was treating the helpless girl showed that she was better than she looked. And perhaps--as Mr. James considered--Miss Bull had an ax to grind on her own account.
However this might be, from that moment Miss Bull was in charge of the Amelia Square establishment. Whatever means she used to induce Lord Derrington to consent, she certainly managed to get the lease renewed in Margery's name. Some of the boarders went; but others came in their place, and these being younger added to the gayety of the house. So all was settled, and Miss Bull became a person of importance. She was the power behind the throne, and ruled judiciously. In this way did she do away with the reputation of the house as a place where a crime had been committed. In a year all was forgotten.
CHAPTER V
[A LOVERS' MEETING]
Every one who was any one knew the Honorable Mrs. Ward. She was a fluffy-haired kitten of a woman, more like a Dresden china shepherdess than a mere human being. Nothing could be prettier than her face and figure, and nothing more engaging than her manners. With her yellow hair, her charming face, and her melting blue eyes, she managed to hold her own against younger women. The late Mr. Ward, Lord Ransome's son, had been a fast young man, devoted to the turf and to his pretty wife. But he was killed when riding in a steeplechase two years after his marriage, and left his widow alone in the world with one daughter for consolation in her affliction. Mrs. Ward being in want of money--for her deceased father had been a general with nothing but his pay--played her cards so well with regard to her father-in-law, that he allowed her a good income and thought she was the most perfect of women. But Lord Ransome was the only one of the family who thought so, for the other relatives fought rather shy of the pretty, pleading widow.
Not that Mrs. Ward minded. She characterized the women as frumps and the men as fools, and, having enough to live on comfortably, set up a house in Curzon Street. It was thought that she would marry again; and probably she would have done so had a sufficiently rich husband with a title been forthcoming. But somehow no one worth capturing ever came Mrs. Ward's way, and as time went on she chose to assume the role of a devoted mother, and--as she phrased it--to live again in her daughter. This was quite wrong, as Dorothy Ward was a slim, serious-minded girl of nineteen, not given to gayety, and was one who was anxious to marry a husband with mind rather than with money. How frivolous little Mrs. Ward came to have such a Puritan daughter no one ever could make out. She resembled her mother neither in face, nor in manner, nor in tastes. Mrs. Ward openly lamented that Dorothy was such a difficult girl to manage, which meant that Dorothy had refused several good matches, and had declined to be guided entirely by her mother's opinion. When the Earl of Summerslea proposed and was not accepted, Mrs. Ward was furious, but Dorothy said steadily that she would never marry a brute with a title.
"You'll marry any one I choose," said Mrs. Ward when the two were discussing the matter.
"Certainly not Lord Summerslea," rejoined Dorothy, steadily.
"And certainly not that penniless George Brendon," retorted her mother. "You shall not throw yourself away on him."
"He is a good man and a clever man, and a man whom any woman might be proud of winning, mother."