"Good God!" ejaculated Mr. Wycherly in tones of the utmost consternation.
Jane-Anne looked very surprised.
"There was a first footman at Dursley House. Oh, he was a beautiful young man!" she exclaimed in reminiscent rapture; "so dignified."
Mr. Wycherly was quite shaken out of his usual smiling fatalism. Had he been able at the moment to analyse his feelings he would have been amazed at the violence of his objection to a first footman as a possible husband for Jane-Anne. But just then he was only conscious of strong resentment at the very idea.
It was one thing for her to wait upon him, but to think of his Greek nymph in intimate relations with anybody's first footman was inconceivable. He grew hot all over, and his chief desire at that moment was to knock somebody down.
There she stood by the fireplace, slender and virginal and sweet, a graceful, gracious figure in the straight blue linen dress Mrs. Methuen had chosen for her, regarding him with large surprised brown eyes, and calmly proposing to marry a footman.
"Do you not think it would be nice?" she asked.
"My dear," said Mr. Wycherly, recovering himself with difficulty and striving ineffectually to speak with his usual calm detachment, "it is an outrageous and impossible contingency, and I beg that you will forthwith dismiss it from your mind at once and for ever."
"Sir, you are not eating your dinner," Jane-Anne remarked after a moment's silence.
"How can I eat if you suggest such horrible things?" Mr. Wycherly complained.