“Yes, and turns up her eyes over it, and acts quite a pretty pantomime of resignation over it still, though Deborah’s been one of the family eighteen years. The consequence is that the boys have never learnt to look upon her as a sister, and so they’re falling in love with her. Godwin, and Hervey—yes, and Rees too, whatever Marion may like to think.”
“So much the better. Then Rees can marry the girl, though I think one of the gamekeepers would be a more suitable match.”
“Betty, how can you? You talk just like an ordinary spiteful girl. Deborah is as much a lady as we are ourselves.”
“Very well then. Don’t let’s talk any more about it. We shall only quarrel. And all about a girl who thinks that a smattering of French, German and the piano form a good education.”
There was a pause. But Kate, who always liked to worry a subject to death, soon broke out again.
“Betty, why do you think papa wouldn’t let Rees marry Marion? He’s so fond of Rees, he really treats him almost as if he were his own son.”
“You don’t understand papa,” said Elizabeth, with authority. “He always seems so easy-going that people don’t guess that he’s just like a rock underneath. Nobody thinks so much of class distinctions and money distinctions—those are almost the same thing nowadays—as he does. Rees would have no more chance as a son-in-law than—than Amos Goodhare,” she ended contemptuously.
Lady Kate laughed and pretended to shudder.
“Oh, old Amos,” she cried with real disgust. “Don’t speak of that man. I can’t bear him. I think he has such shifting eyes and such a bad, horrible face. I never could understand why papa allowed such a man into the house at all.”
“He is really a well-read man, and he looks just such a man as a librarian ought to look,” said Elizabeth, in a reserved tone, as if she knew more than she intended to tell.