Mr. Wycherly had laid down his glass of port untasted, when Miss Esperance first began to speak. Now he lifted the decanter and poured out another, offering it to Miss Esperance. "My dear friend," he exclaimed eagerly, "they are married. Nothing can alter that. Let us drink pretty Margaret's health, and wish her all prosperity and happiness, and may the man she has chosen try to be worthy of her!"
Miss Esperance demurred: but Mr. Wycherly continued to lean across the table with the glass of wine held out toward her, and he looked so pleading, and she so loved to gratify him, that at last, though a little under protest, she consented to drink this toast, and took one sip from the proffered glass of port.
"I wish I could feel that it will turn out well," she said wistfully.
"She must love him right well," Mr. Wycherly said thoughtfully, "and she is not a foolish girl. She has judgment and discretion."
"Where love is concerned," said Miss Esperance, "judgment and discretion generally go to the wall."
And Mr. Wycherly could find no arguments in disproof of this statement.
Lady Alicia made a special journey to Remote for the express purpose of reproaching Mr. Wycherly with the conduct of a nephew he had never seen.
Miss Esperance was out; Mr. Wycherly, as usual, reading in his room. There Lady Alicia sought him and plunged at once into a history of the "entanglement," as she called it, concluding with these words: "I told her never to mention that young man to me again, and she never did, so of course I concluded that, like a sensible girl, she had put the whole thing out of her head: but the hussy has married him, married him without ever a wedding present or a single new gown, and what can I do? A girl, too, who might have married anyone, by far the prettiest of the four, and look how well the rest have married!"
"She must love him very much," Mr. Wycherly said dreamily. "Pretty Margaret, so gentle always and so quiet. What strength, what tenacity of purpose under that docile feminine exterior! Dear Lady Alicia, she is more like you than any of your other daughters."
"Like me!" Lady Alicia almost shouted. "Do you mean to say I could have run away with any bottle-nosed vintner that ever tasted port—I, forsooth!"