Evan pitifully pressed her hand, and sighed.
“Tea is on the table down-stairs,” said Mrs. Mel. “I have cooked something for you, Louisa. Do you sleep here to-night?”
“Can I tell you, Mama?” murmured the Countess. “I am dependent on our Evan.”
“Oh! well, we will eat first,” said Mrs. Mel, and they went to the table below, the Countess begging her mother to drop titles in designating her to the servants, which caused Mrs. Mel to say:
“There is but one. I do the cooking”; and the Countess, ever disposed to flatter and be suave, even when stung by a fact or a phrase, added:
“And a beautiful cook you used to be, dear Mama!”
At the table, awaiting them, sat Mrs. Wishaw, Mrs. Fiske, and Mr. Goren, who soon found themselves enveloped in the Countess’s graciousness. Mr. Goren would talk of trade, and compare Lymport business with London, and the Countess, loftily interested in his remarks, drew him out to disgust her brother. Mrs. Wishaw, in whom the Countess at once discovered a frivolous pretentious woman of the moneyed trading class, she treated as one who was alive to society, and surveyed matters from a station in the world, leading her to think that she tolerated Mr. Goren, as a lady-Christian of the highest rank should tolerate the insects that toil for us. Mrs. Fiske was not so tractable, for Mrs. Fiske was hostile and armed. Mrs. Fiske adored the great Mel, and she had never loved Louisa. Hence, she scorned Louisa on account of her late behaviour toward her dead parent. The Countess saw through her, and laboured to be friendly with her, while she rendered her disagreeable in the eyes of Mrs. Wishaw, and let Mrs. Wishaw perceive that sympathy was possible between them; manoeuvring a trifle too delicate, perhaps, for the people present, but sufficient to blind its keen-witted author to the something that was being concealed from herself, of which something, nevertheless, her senses apprehensively warned her: and they might have spoken to her wits, but that mortals cannot, unaided, guess, or will not, unless struck in the face by the fact, credit, what is to their minds the last horror.
“I came down in the coach, quite accidental, with this gentleman,” said Mrs. Wishaw, fanning a cheek and nodding at Mr. Goren. “I’m an old flame of dear Mel’s. I knew him when he was an apprentice in London. Now, wasn’t it odd? Your mother—I suppose I must call you ‘my lady’?”
The Countess breathed a tender “Spare me,” with a smile that added, “among friends!”
Mrs. Wishaw resumed: “Your mother was an old flame of this gentleman’s, I found out. So there were two old flames, and I couldn’t help thinking! But I was so glad to have seen dear Mel once more.”