“It may be,” said Mr. Brander, after a pause, “that she feels a kind of most innocent jealousy of you. She has, all through her married life, been used to look upon me as one of those unattached tame cats who are only too glad to catch mice for any responsible matron who is kind to them. My sister-in-law annexed me in that capacity long ago; sends me to market, sets me to mind the children, to nail up the fallen picture, or even to lecture the gardener. I don’t suppose she has seen me speak to another lady—a young lady—for ten years.”
“I should have thought, by her look, she would be equal to lecturing the gardener herself,” said Olivia, drily.
Mr. Brander laughed. “Well, she is not quite resourceless when it comes to an affair of the tongue,” he admitted. “But you must not think she is a shrew, for all that. Then, she has been our beauty, too, and has been used to set the fashions for the ladies. While now——” He stopped and smiled as he looked at the blooming, prettily dressed girl beside him.
Olivia, however, found this no smiling matter, but replied, with deep scorn—
“Surely, Mrs. Brander can’t be so small-minded as that. I can assure her I have no wish to entrench upon her privileges; and, with only eighteen pounds a year for dress and pocket money, I am not likely to set fashions that there will be a rush to follow.”
“You might set a fashion in faces,” suggested he.
“Oh,” said she, laughing, “if Mrs. Brander envies me the admiration of Mr. Frederick Williams—or, indeed, of any of the jeunesse doree of this neighborhood—I can assure her that she will only have to wait a very little while before my unqualified disdain will bring them all again to her matronly feet.”
“Myself among the number.”
“Oh, Mr. Brander, I didn’t count you.”
“But in mercy you must. I am rather grey behind the ears, and rather lean about the jaws; but let me still think myself as eligible a bachelor as the place boasts.”