“Oh yes, excessively! She is a most agreeable woman. I was presented to her at Covent Garden tonight. I was dining with Fitz, you know, and we thought we might as well go to the play, and they were there, in a box. Fitz is a little acquainted with the family, and he took me up, and the long and the short of it was we joined them afterwards at the ball, and Lady Fairford asked very particularly after my sister, and said she had had it in mind to call on you, but from the circumstance of her having been out of London just lately—they have a place in Hertfordshire, I believe—it had not so far been in her power. But she said she should certainly come.” He gave her a fleeting glance, and began to study his finger-nails. “She may—I do not know—but she may bring her daughter,” he added, rather too off-handedly.
“Oh!” said Judith. “I hope she will. Has she only the one daughter?”
“Oh no, I believe she has a numerous family, but Miss Fairford is the only one out. Her name,” said Peregrine rapturously, “is Harriet.”
Miss Taverner knew her duty, and immediately replied: “What a pretty name, to be sure!”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” said Peregrine. “She—I think she is very pretty too. I do not know how she may strike you, but I certainly consider her uncommonly handsome.”
“Is she dark or fair?” inquired his sister.
But to this question he could not give any very certain answer. He rather thought Miss Fairford’s eyes were blue, but they might be grey: he could not be sure. She was not tall, quite the reverse, yet Judith must not be imagining a dab of a girl. It was no such thing: but she would see for herself.
After a good deal in this strain he took himself off to bed, leaving his sister to her reflections.
She had not been used to see him in the toils of a young woman, and could hardly be blamed for feeling a certain jealousy. She did her best to banish it, and succeeded very fairly. When Lady Fairford, who turned out to be a kindly sensible woman in the early forties, came to pay her promised call, she did bring her eldest daughter with her, and Judith had leisure to observe Peregrine’s charmer.
Miss Fairford was not long out of the schoolroom, and had all the natural shyness of her seventeen years. She regarded Judith out of a pair of large dove-like eyes with a great deal of awe, coloured a little when directly addressed, and allowed her soft mouth to tremble into a fugitive, appealing smile. She had pretty brown curls, and a neat figure, but to Judith, who was built on Junoesque lines, she could not seem other than short.