"What is the something wanting which you have found?"
"I did not say I had found——"
"Oh, but you would not have suggested that I might discover the weak spot if you had not found it yourself!"
"You are as searching as a cross-examining counsel," said Mrs. Mornington, laughing at him. "Well, I will be perfectly frank with you. To my mind, Geoffrey's character suffers from the fault which doctors—speaking of a patient's physical condition—call want of tone. There is a want of mental tone in Geoffrey. I have known him from a boy. I like him; I admire his talents. He and my sons were at Eton together. I have seen more of him perhaps than any one else in this neighbourhood. I like him—I am sorry for him."
"Why sorry? Has he not all the good things of this world?"
"Not all. He lost his father before he was five years old; and his mother is, I fear, a poor creature."
"Eccentric, I understand."
"Lamentably so—a woman who isolates herself from all the people whose society would do her good, and who opens her door to any spirit-rapping charlatan whose tricks become public talk. Poor thing! One ought not to be angry with her, but it is provoking to see such a place as Discombe in the possession of a woman who is utterly unable to fill the position to which she has been elevated."
"Who was Mrs. Wornock before she became Mrs. Wornock? I have heard hints——"
"Yes, and you are never likely to hear more than hints," retorted Mrs. Mornington, impatiently. "Nobody in this neighbourhood knows who Mrs. Wornock was. No creature of her kith or kin has ever been seen at Discombe. I don't suppose her son knows anything more of her antecedents than you or I. Old Squire Wornock left Discombe about seven and twenty years ago to drink the waters of some obscure spring in Bohemia—a place nobody hereabouts had ever heard of. He was past sixty when he set out on that journey, a confirmed bachelor. One would as soon have expected him to bring back the moon as to bring a wife, but to the utter stupefaction of all his friends and acquaintance, he returned with a pretty-looking delicate young creature he had married in Germany—at Dresden, I believe—and who looked much more like dying within the next five years than he did."