“That’s right. He’s fond enough of you to keep him right, so never you mind what scraggy Wilters says.”
Maude did not reply, but her face flushed, and she sat looking proud and content in her faith.
Meantime her ladyship had been furnished with the last new piece of gossip regarding the young man who had gone to the bad, and was supremely happy.
In spite of her ladyship’s watchfulness Tom managed that his father should have a little wine, and the consequence was that he became very garrulous, making some personal remarks to Sir Grantley about matters of the past which the baronet wished to be considered too youthful to remember, and suffering at last from such decided twinges of his old complaint that he had to leave the table. Maude at once seized the excuse to be freed for the rest of the evening from a presence she detested, and went to attend upon her father, while Tom started to have a quiet cigar and a game of billiards, leaving her ladyship and Sir Grantley together to discuss a few more of the preliminaries of the wedding; Sir Grantley going so far, when he left, as to say that this was about the pleasantest evening he had had at the house in Portland Place, “don’t you know.”
But those below stairs were not above talking at dinner and supper in the servants’ hall, while Mademoiselle Justine sat like a smiling sphinx and listened, but said nothing.
“For my part,” said Robbins, “I think her young ladyship bears it admirably, as a well-bred lady should. She’s getting to know that people in the upper classes can’t marry as they like, and behaving quite right.”
“Ah, poor girl,” said Mrs Downes; “but under that there quiet look who knows what a volcano is a-busting in her breast. Ah, I have a heart of my own.”
“It seems to me,” said Dolly Preen, who during the past few weeks had been growing thin and acid consequent upon slighted love, much banter, the threatened loss of her situation, and genuine feminine jealousy of Justine, who had been intrusted with the task of accompanying her young mistress in her walks—“it seems to me that Lady Maude is finding consolation somewhere.”
Justine, who had been sitting so sphinx-like, suddenly flashed into life.
“You—you lil bébé of a girl, say what you mean,” she cried angrily.