He held out his hand and received hers, which he kissed. Then he turned and left her alone.
“I should swallow him, if I were you,” was Lady Maria's spoken reflection upon what her young friend was able to tell her. “I should swallow him like a pill. You won't taste him much, and he'll do you worlds of good. The world? I'm not talking of the world. I never do. He'll put you right with yourself. That's much more to the point. He's in love with you, I believe. From what you tell me, that's new. You suppose that he was in love with you before. I do not. He was in love with himself, as you presented him. Most men are. Now you are to occupy that exceedingly comfortable position of a woman out of love with her husband, extravagantly beloved by him. Next to being a man's mistress there's no surer ground for you than that, with respectability added, mind you. No mean addition. Take my advice, my dear, and you won't regret it.”
But Sanchia knew at the bottom of her heart that Ingram was not in love with her. He wanted her restored to his collection.
IX
On the Monday morning, after a night of broken sleep, she received a letter from her mother.
“MY DEAR CHILD,” Mrs. Percival wrote, “I met Nevile Ingram, quite unexpectedly, on Saturday evening. Yesterday he called here, after he had seen you in the house where you choose to remain. Our interview was naturally distressing, and I should be glad to feel sure that you could spare me a third. I need not remind you of the first.
“But I feel bound to own, from what I could learn from him of his discussion (as I must call it) with you, that I am most uneasy. If I were to say unhappy, tho' it would be less than the truth, you might accuse me of exaggeration. That I could not bear. Therefore, let 'uneasy' be the word. Is it possible, I ask myself, that my youngest child—my latest-born—can find it in her heart to torture the already agonised heart of her mother? I put the question to you, Sanchia, for I am incapable myself of finding the answer. I blush to write it—but such is the terrible fact. I can only beg you to put me out of suspense as gently as may be. I am growing old. There are limits to what a grey-haired mother's heart can bear.