"You know her very well indeed, and you don't—know—that, Mr. Wynne!" exclaimed Mr. Bagot.
"Is she a lady, Mr. Wynne?" asked Mrs. Bagot, somewhat impatiently, as if that were a much more important matter.
By this time the Laird had managed to basely desert his friend; had got himself into his bedroom, and from thence, by another door, into the street and away.
"A lady?" said Taffy; "a—it so much depends upon what that word exactly means, you know; things are so—a—so different here. Her father was a gentleman, I believe—a fellow of Trinity, Cambridge—and a clergyman, if that means anything!... he was unfortunate and all that—a—intemperate, I fear, and not successful in life. He has been dead six or seven years."
"And her mother?"
"I really know very little about her mother, except that she was very handsome, I believe, and of inferior social rank to her husband. She's also dead; she died soon after him."
"What is the young lady, then? An English governess, or something of that sort?"
"Oh, no, no—a—nothing of that sort," said Taffy (and inwardly, "You coward—you cad of a Scotch thief of a sneak of a Laird—to leave all this to me!").
"What? Has she independent means of her own, then?"