Ermyntrude sniffed audibly, and rose to her feet. “I am three-and-twenty,” she said, “and that is enough, thank you.” There was something in it all which I did not understand. The sensation of being out of place, as in the trying-on room of a dressmaker’s, oppressed me. The sex were effecting sundry manouvres and countermarchings peculiar to themselves—so much I could see by the way in which the two were talking with their eyes—hut what it was all about was beyond me. The mother finally inclined her head to one side, and pursed together her lips. Ermyntrude drew herself to her full stature, threw up her chin for a moment like one of Albert Moore’s superb full-throated goddesses, and then relaxed with that half-cheerful sigh which we express in types with “heigho!” It was at once apparent to me that the situation had lightened—but how or why I cannot profess to guess. Uncle Dudley, to whom I subsequently narrated what I had observed, abounded in theories, but upon reflection they do not impress, much less convince, me. Here is in substance one of the several hypothetical conversations which he sketched out as having passed in that moment of pre-occupied and surcharged silence:
Mother [lowering brows]. You may be sure that at the very best it will be Bayswater.
Daughter [with quiver of nostrils]. Better that than hanging on for a Belgravia which never comes.
Mother [disclosing the tips of two teeth]. It is a chance of a title going for ever.
Daughter [curling lip]. What chance is ever likely here?
Mother [lifting brows]. He’s as old as Methusaleh!”
Daughter [flashing eyes]. That’s my business!
Mother [little trembling of the eyelashes]. You will never know how I have striven and struggled for you!
Daughter [smoothing features]. Merely the innate maternal instinct, my dear, common to all mammalia.
Mother [beginning to tip head sidewise]. It is true that Tristram is docile, sheep-like, simple——