“I’ll write all round the country, and tell the people I’m eight-and-twenty or thirty, for anything I know, if you have no objection. I don’t see any harm it can do; telling truth perhaps mayn’t do one much good: but if I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned this at all events, that there’s absolutely no good in the other course.”
“I don’t know what you mean by courses. No one I hope has been committing any fraud in this house. If you please to tell people you are thirty, which is perfectly contrary to fact, you must only take the consequences. Your miserable temper, Clara, has been the ruin of you, and when I’m in my grave you’ll repent it.”
So saying she left the room, and coming down in a few minutes in a black velvet garment, trimmed with ermine, and with a muff of the same judicial fur, she repaired to the school-room, where, much to William’s relief, she graciously begged a holiday for Howard, and then asked William with, at the end of her invitation, a great smile, which plainly said, “I know you can hardly believe your ears but it’s true notwithstanding,” to lend an old woman his arm in a walk up and down the terrace.
William was of course at her service, though the honour was one which at that moment was almost oppressive.
CHAPTER XLI.
HOW THEY TALKED
After a few turns, and some little talk, Mrs. Kincton Knox said:—