“I know what a comfort she must have been to you,” sighed Lady Ombersley. “And I’m sure, dear Horace, that nothing could be more affecting than your devotion to the child!”
“I wasn’t in the least devoted,” interrupted Sir Horace. “I shouldn’t have kept her with me if she’d been troublesome. Never was. Good little thing, Sophy!”
“Yes, my dear, no doubt, but to be dragging a little girl all over Spain and Portugal, when she would have been far better in a select school — ”
“Not she! She’d have learned to be missish,” said Sir Horace cynically. “Besides, no use to prose to me now on that head — it’s too late! The thing is, Lizzie, I’m in something of a fix. I want you to take care of Sophy while I’m in South America.”
“South America?” gasped Lady Ombersley.
“Brazil. I don’t expect to be away for very long, but I can’t take my little Sophy, and I can’t leave her with Tilly because Tilly’s dead. Died in Vienna, couple of years ago. A devilish inconvenient thing to do, but I daresay she didn’t mean it.”
“Tilly?” said Lady Ombersley, all at sea.
“Lord, Elizabeth, don’t keep on repeating everything I say! Shocking bad habit! Miss Tillingham, Sophy’s governess!”
“Good heavens! Do you mean to tell me that the child has no governess now?”
“Of course she has not! She don’t need a governess. I always found plenty of chaperons for her when we were in Paris, and in Lisbon it don’t signify. But I can’t leave her alone in England.”