“That is mamma in the hall,” said Ermyntrude.
Describing Impressions of a Momentous Interview, loosely gathered by One who, although present, was not quite In it
Mrs Albert has smiled upon my suit to be her son-in-law.
The smile did not, however, gush forth spontaneously at the outset. When the opportunity for imparting our great news came, we three were in the drawing-room, and Mrs Albert, who had just entered, had been allowed to discover me holding Ermyntrude’s passive hand in mine. She cast a swift little glance over us both, and seemed not to like what she saw. I was conscious of the impression on the instant that Ermyntrude did not particularly like it either. An effect of profound isolation, absurd enough, but depressingly real, suddenly encompassed me. I began talking something—the words coming out and scattering quite on their own incoherent account—and the gist of what they made me say sounded in my ears as if it were a determined enemy who was saying it Why should I be speaking of my age, and the fact that I had held Ermie on my knee as a child, and even of my rheumatism? And did I actually allude to them? or only hear the clamorous echoes of conscience in my guilty soul, the while my tongue was uttering other matters? I don’t know, and the fear that Ermie would admit that she really hadn’t been paying attention has restrained me from asking her since.
But Mrs Albert was paying attention. She held me with a cool and unblinking eye during my clumsy monologue, and she continued this steady gaze for a time after I had finished. She stirred the small and shapely headgear of black velvet and bird’s-wing which she had worn in from the street, just by the fraction of a forward inch, to show that she understood what I had been saying—and also very much which I had left unsaid.
“Hm—m!” the good lady remarked, at length. “I see!”
“Well, mamma, having seen,” Ermyntrude turned languidly in her chair to observe, lifting the hand which still rested within mine into full and patent view, and then withdrawing it abruptly—“having seen, and been seen, there’s really nothing more to do, is there?”
“She is very young,” said the mother, in a tentative musing manner which suggested the thought that I, on the other hand, was very much the other way.