"Will he be home from school presently? I should love to see him."
"Nay, madam, that's impossible, for he is living at the Bath with his grandmother, Lady Lanigan. Mr. Stobart wrote to her before he left Portsmouth, a farewell letter that melted her hard heart. 'Twas after the news of the taking of Louisburg, when her ladyship came here in a terrible fantig, and almost swooned when she saw the boy, and swore he was the image of his father at the same age."
"And she carried him away with her on a visit?"
"Yes, madam. She begged so hard that I could not deny her. For you see, madam, he is her only grandson; and there's a fortune going begging, as you may say. His father was too proud to try and bring her round; but if Georgie behaves prettily, who knows but she may send him to Eton—where his father was bred—and leave him the whole of her fortune?"
"True, madam. No doubt you have done best for your boy. But I fear you must feel lonely without him."
"Oh, I missed him sadly for the first week or two, madam; but a child in a house, where there's but one servant, is a constant trouble. In and out, in and out with muddy shoes, morning, noon, and night. 'Tis clean, clean, clean after them all day long, and it makes one's girl cross and impudent. He has his grandma's own woman to wash and dress him, and a footman to change his shoes when he comes in from the street."
"Is the visit to last long?"
"That depends upon his behaviour, and if her ladyship cottons to him."
"Well, so long as you can do without him, of course 'tis best," said Antonia, in a dull voice.
Her mind was wandering to that exile whose name she would not pronounce. To have sacrificed station and fortune for such a wife as this—for a woman without heart or brains, who had not enough natural feeling to tremble for a husband in danger, or to grieve at the absence of an only child!