“Harriet! I do not see that it is a laughing matter. To an invalid lady. Not that you have any experience of invalids; for my dear Sarah enjoyed excellent health till almost the last.”
“To a gentleman,” persisted Harriet, coolly. “It is no laughing matter, Uncle Jacob. When I leave this house, which at least afforded me some miserable sort of protection, I shall advertise for a husband. I dare say something nice will turn up. I want a husband I can be really fond of. Somehow I have faith in his turning up.”
She spoke to herself, but she rejoiced in scandalizing the hateful humbug opposite.
“Harriet, my dear,” said the widower, solemnly, “all this is very much out of place. You should have more respect for the holiness of sorrow, Harriet.”
“Oh, dear, no, you needn’t trouble about that,” she interrupted him. “I’m in deadly earnest, I assure you. I’ve printed an advertisement before, but it came to nothing. I mean to look out better this time.”
Her accent belied the outer calm of her attitude; she began washing the cups.
“Printed an advertisement from my house? From Villa Blanda? If so, I have nourished a—”
“No.”
“I am extremely agitated, Harriet. You are my cherished Sarah’s step-niece. I cannot imagine that any member, any step-member, of my dear wife’s family would demean herself in the manner you describe.”
He got up and began to walk about, enjoying his brand-new mourning. “For any one, of however humble origin—and Sarah’s sister married beneath her—to enter into relations of—of an amorous description with a stranger! Harriet, I am horrified. We are not in India, Harriet. You are not a black woman, though you may think and act like one. I appeal to you to remember that you are connected, however distantly, with an honorable family. You are not free, Harriet, as you might have been before your father’s first marriage.”