“There goes a suitor who will need a great deal of consolation,” said Mrs. Thrale, as a small man in military undress walked past the group with a scowl and a swagger. “Lud! Captain Mathews is so fond a lover I doubt if he would feel completely happy even if he had proof that the lady was crying her eyes out!”
“What! is’t possible that the list of suitors included a person so obviously ineligible as that Captain Mathews?” cried Mrs. Cholmondeley.
“My dear, you should know better than to suggest that the ineligibility of any man is obvious,” said Mrs. Thrale. “Did not we all, up to this morning, regard Mr. Long as the most obviously ineligible of all the lady’s admirers?”
“He is certainly old enough to be her father,” said Mrs. Cholmondeley.
“And a man who is old enough to be a young woman’s father is certainly old enough to be her husband; that is what we should have said, had we made a right use of our experience of life—and love,” said Mrs. Crewe.
“And some of us have had a good deal of both,” remarked Mrs. Thrale, looking vaguely into the distance, lest any one of her hearers might fancy that her comment was meant to be personal, and not general.
But of course there was no lady within hearing who did not accept the compliment as directed against herself. And whatever Mrs. Thrale’s experiences of life and love may have been, she had sufficient knowledge of her own sex to be well aware that no vagueness of generalisation on her part would prevent any one of her friends from feeling assured that the lady had some one in her eye when she spoke. That was why they all smiled consciously, and glanced down with an excellent simulation of artlessness.
Before they had raised their eyes again, the sour-faced officer who had been referred to by Mrs. Thrale as Captain Mathews, had returned from his march across the gardens. He was about to pass the group when he seemed to change his mind. He turned on his heel and swaggered up to them.
“I dare swear, ladies, that you have been, like all the rest of our friends in this place, discussing the latest freak of the beautiful Miss Linley?” he said.
“On the contrary, sir, we have been discussing the engagement of Miss Linley to Mr. Long,” said Mrs. Thrale.