The girl sank back upon her chair. She was white and breathed with difficulty.
‘You will understand now, my dear,’ Mrs. Waltham continued, more in her ordinary voice, ‘why it so shocked me to hear that you had been seen talking with Mr. Eldon near the Manor. I feared it was an appointment. Your explanation is all I wanted: it relieves me. The worst of it is, other people will hear of it, and of course we can’t explain to everyone.’
‘Why should people hear?’ Adela exclaimed, in a quivering voice. It was not that she feared to have the story known, but mingled feelings made her almost passionate. ‘Mrs. Mewling has no right to go about talking of me. It is very ill-bred, to say nothing of the unkindness.’
‘Ah, but it is what we have to be prepared for, Adela. That is the world, my child. You see how very careful one has to be. But never mind; it is most fortunate that the Eldons are going. I am so sorry for poor Mrs. Eldon; who could have thought that her son would turn out so badly! And to think that he would have dared to come into my house! At least he had the decency not to show himself at church.’
Adela sat silent. The warring of her heart made outward sounds indistinct.
‘After all,’ pursued her mother, as if making a great concession, ‘I fear it is only too true that those old families become degenerate. One does hear such shocking stories of the aristocracy. But get to bed, dear, and don’t let this trouble you. What a very good thing that all that wealth didn’t go into such hands, isn’t it? Mr. Mutimer will at all events use it in a decent way; it won’t be scattered in vulgar dissipation.—Now kiss me, dear. I haven’t been scolding you, pet; it was only that I felt I had perhaps made a mistake in not telling you these things before, and I blamed myself rather than you.’
Mrs. Waltham returned to her own room, and after a brief turning over of speculations and projects begotten of the new aspect of things, found her reward for conscientiousness in peaceful slumber. But Adela was late in falling asleep. She, too, had many things to revolve, not worldly calculations, but the troubled phantasies of a virgin mind which is experiencing its first shock against the barriers of fate.
CHAPTER IX
Richard Mutimer had strong domestic affections. The English artisan is not demonstrative in such matters, and throughout his life Richard had probably exchanged no word of endearment with any one of his kin, whereas language of the tempestuous kind was common enough from him to one and all of them; for all that he clung closely to the hearth, and nothing in truth concerned him so nearly as the well-being of his mother, his sister, and his brother. For them he had rejoiced as much as for himself in the blessing of fortune. Now that the excitement of change had had time to subside, Richard found himself realising the fact that capital creates cares as well as removes them, and just now the centre of his anxieties lay in the house at Highbury to which his family had removed from Wilton Square.