"Ay; but the property generally? The friend who writes you to-day don't say any thing about that, I suppose—whether any of it is to be sold or not, for instance?"
"The report—of course, being a servant, she can only speak from report—is that Mr. Carew's affairs are in a sad state. Every thing, I believe, is to be sold at once. The whole estate is said to be—I don't know if I use the right term—mortgaged."
"Just so," replied Solomon; "yes, yes. That is so, no doubt." There was a slight pause; Mrs. Basil courtesied, and was about to leave the room. "Stop a bit, ma'am," said Solomon. "My wife tells me that you are a lone woman—a widow. Perhaps you'd like to take a bit of dinner with us to-day?"
Harry began to think her husband was intoxicated. He did get occasionally so when any particularly good stroke of business was in course of progress, and on such occasions his manner was unusually affable; but she had never seen him half so gracious as at present. Hospitality, though he did sometimes bring a mining agent or a broker home to dinner, was by no means his strong point. Mrs. Basil looked doubtfully at her dress, which, though homely, was perfectly well-made and lady-like, and murmured something about its being almost the dinner-hour, and there being "no time."
"Oh, never mind your gown" (which, by-the-by, Solomon pronounced "gownd"); "we're quite plain people ourselves, as my wife will tell you. You shall take pot-luck with us. Where's Charley? That boy's always late."
But at that very moment the young gentleman in question entered the room, at the same time as did the servant with the announcement that dinner was on the table.
The astonishment of the domestic at seeing her mistress taken down to the dining-room by the new lodger was only exceeded by that of Charley, as, with his mother on his arm, he followed the strangely assorted pair. "I knew she was a witch," he murmured, "with her human skull and her Joanna Southcott; but this beats old Margery's doings at Gethin."
"Hush, hush!" whispered his mother, for Charley's high spirits and audacity always terrified her when exhibited in his father's presence: "they have found they have a common acquaintance, and so made friends."
"Father didn't know Swedenborg, did he?" answered the young man, slyly. "My belief is, he has fallen in love with her. I saw a black cat on the stairs. She can make any body do it, as I was telling Aggey" (the young rogue had been to Soho since the morning); "I shall be the next victim, no doubt. It's no use saying to myself, 'Thou shalt not marry thy grandmother.' Her charms are too powerful for the rubric. You'll see she'll not say grace."
Mr. Charles was right in that particular of his diagnosis of their new guest. Mrs. Basil did treat that devotional formula, which Mrs. Coe never omitted to pronounce, in spite of her husband's contemptuous shrugs, with considerable indifference. She sat opposite to Charley, and more than once, when he looked up suddenly, he caught her gaze fixed earnestly upon him. Those wondrous eyes of hers yet shone forth bright and clear; her cheeks were still smooth; and, though her brow had many a wrinkle, they were the footprints of thought and care, rather than of years.