This was a favourite expression of Mrs Trefusis'. She invariably spoke as if a curse had hung over her since her birth.
"What does it matter who one knows?" said Anne.
Mrs Trefusis did not answer. The knots in her face moved a little. She knew what country life and country society were better than Anne. She had all her life lived in the upper of the two sets which may be found in every country neighbourhood. She did what she considered to be her duty by the secondary set, but she belonged by birth and by inclination to the upper class. It was at first with bewildered surprise, and later on with cold anger, that she observed that her only son, bone of her bone, very son of herself and her kind dead husband, showed a natural tendency to gravitate towards the second-rate among their neighbours.
Why did he do it? Why did he bring strange, loud-voiced, vulgar men to Easthope, the kind of men whom Mr Trefusis would not have tolerated? She might have known that her husband would die of pneumonia just when her son needed him most. She had not expected it, but she ought to have expected it. Did not everything in her lot go crooked, while the lives of all those around her went straight? What was the matter with her son, that he was more at ease with these undesirable companions than with the sons of his father's old friends? Why would he never accompany her on her annual pilgrimage to London?
George was one of those lethargic, vain men who say they hate London. Catch them going to London! Perhaps if efforts were made to catch them there, they might repair thither. But in London they are nobodies; consequently to London they do not go. And the same man who eschews London will generally be found to gravitate in the country to a society in which he is the chief personage. It had been so with George. Fred Black, the disreputable horse-breaker, and his companions, had sedulously paid court to him. George, who had a deep-rooted love of horse-flesh, was often at Fred's training stables. There he met Janet, and fell in love with her, as did most of Fred's associates. But unlike them, George had withdrawn. He knew he should "do" for himself with "the county" if he married Janet. And he could not face his mother. So he sulked like a fish under the bank, half suspicious that he is being angled for. So ignorant of his fellow-creatures was George that there actually had been a moment when he suspected Janet of trying to "land him," and he did not think any the worse of her.
Then, after months of sullen indecision, he suddenly rushed upon his fate. That was a week ago.
Anne left her chair as Mrs Trefusis did not answer, and knelt down by the old woman.
"Dear Mrs Trefusis," she said, "the girl is a nice girl, innocent and good, and without a vestige of conceit."
"She has nothing to be conceited about that I can see."
"Oh! yes. She might be conceited about marrying George. It is an amazing match for her. And she might be conceited about her beauty. I should be if I had that face."