“Really, Aunt, I do not know.”
“No, child, you never know anything. It is very tiresome. I should like the dinner to go off well, and that wine has quite slipped my memory. Now, was it the hock, or the champagne? He would like the compliment if I had the forethought to have it served.” Isabel shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
“It is very tiresome,” continued Aunt Anne. “He praised one of them, and made a face at the other; but perhaps I shall recollect by and by. I wonder that I remember anything, harassed as my poor brain is with worry and trouble, and you never trying in the least to help me, but rather setting yourself in antagonism.”
“Oh, Aunt, you are too hard.”
“Not a bit, child. And I am surprised at your giving so much as a passing thought to young Mr Beck. Tom! Gracious, what a name! Only fit for a groom, or one of the men about the farm.”
“Really, Aunt,” began Isabel.
“Now, pray do not interrupt me, Isabel. The name is common and absurd. Now, Cheltnam—Sir Cheltnam—Sir Cheltnam Burwood! It is old, aristocratic, and refined. A name to be proud of. But Beck—Tom Beck! Faugh!”
“It sounds honest, Auntie,” said the girl with spirit, “and does not suggest drinking the Cheltenham waters, which I believe are very bitter.”
“Now that’s absurd and childish, Isabel, and you know it is. I did hope that now young Beck has gone, you would come to your senses. But I will be fair, and say that your brothers are worse than you. I suppose I shall have to beg and pray of them to come in to dinner, and behave like Christians, and not let Sir Cheltnam think he is going to be brother-in-law to a couple of young men with malice and hatred in their hearts. All your beautiful nurse’s doing, my dear, all her fault. Well, really! To jump up and run out of the room like that!” cried Aunt Anne, staring in amazement at the last fold of her niece’s dress, as the poor girl hurried away, unable to bear the long flow of annoying prattle, and to hide her chagrin in face of the ordeal to which she was to be submitted at the dinner projected by her aunt.
She hurried up to her room, to sink upon her knees by her bed and bury her face in her hands.