"To preserve which, you remain a widow?"
"Certainly," she responded. "I have no trouble now in patching and piecing that rag the world calls—a character. I can sit at your feet every day unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but they are female eccentrics, and have cast off the rag altogether."
Sir Austin drew nearer to her. "You would have made an admirable mother, madam."
This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.
"It is," he continued, "ten thousand pities that you are not one."
"Do you think so?" She spoke with humility.
"I would," he went on, "that heaven had given you a daughter."
"Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?"
"Our blood, madam, should have been one!"
The lady tapped her toe with her parasol. "But I am a mother," she said. "Richard is my son. Yes! Richard is my boy," she reiterated.