“He feels his gout a little, but considering everything he is remarkably well,” she responded.
Sir Horace took a mere figure of speech in an undesirably literal spirit, saying, with a nod, “Always did drink too much. Still, he must be going on for sixty now, and I don’t suppose you have so much of the other trouble, do you?”
“No, no!” said his sister hastily. Lord Ombersley’s infidelities, though mortifying when conducted, as they too often were, in the full glare of publicity, had never greatly troubled her, but she had no desire to discuss them with her outspoken relative, and gave the conversation an abrupt turn by asking where he had come from.
“Lisbon,” he replied, taking another pinch of snuff.
Lady Ombersley was vaguely surprised. It was now two years since the close of the long Peninsular War, and she rather thought that when last heard of Sir Horace had been in Vienna, no doubt taking mysterious part in the Congress, which had been so rudely interrupted by the escape of that dreadful Monster from Elba. “Oh!” she said, a little blankly. “Of course, you have a house there! I was forgetting! And how is dear Sophia?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Sir Horace, shutting his snuffbox, and restoring it to his pocket, “it’s about Sophy that I’ve come to see you.”
Sir Horace had been a widower for fifteen years, during which period he had neither requested his sister’s help in rearing his daughter nor paid the least heed to her unsolicited advice, but at these words an uneasy feeling stole over her. She said, “Yes, Horace? Dear little Sophia! It must be four years or more since I saw her. How old is she now? I suppose she must be almost out?”
“Been out for years,” responded Sir Horace. “Never anything else, really. She’s twenty.”
“Twenty!” exclaimed Lady Ombersley. She applied her mind to arithmetic, and said, “Yes, she must be, for my own Cecilia is just turned nineteen, and I remember that your Sophia was born almost a year before. Dear me, yes! Poor Marianne! What a lovely creature she was, to be sure!”
With a slight effort Sir Horace conjured up the vision of his dead wife. “Yes, so she was,” he agreed. “One forgets, you know. Sophy’s not much like her — favors me!”