“Well, Mr. Shapleigh, you seem to have altogether forgotten his treatment of Sylvia; and that English wife of his put it out of his power to marry again, just to spite my poor child.�
Luckily Sylvia was out of the room during this; but just then she entered, with a book in her hand, and seated herself at the round mahogany table in the corner of the room, upon which a tall lamp burned with shaded softness. Mrs. Shapleigh wisely dropped that branch of the subject when Sylvia appeared.
“Anyhow, Mr. Shapleigh,� resumed Mrs. Shapleigh, “we shall be obliged to ask Richard Skelton to dinner. We can’t get out of that.�
“Very well, my darling love, we will have Skelton to dinner.�
“But, Mr. Shapleigh, how can we possibly have Richard Skelton to dinner, when he is accustomed to so much elegance abroad? And although we live as well as any people in the county, yet it is nothing to what he will have at Deerchase.�
“Then, my life, we won’t have Skelton to dinner.�
“Now, Mr. Shapleigh, how you talk! You contradict yourself at every other word.—Sylvia, what have you to say on the subject? I declare, you read so much you don’t know anything. The simplest thing seems to puzzle you.�
“Not at all, mamma!� cried Sylvia, with spirit, and bringing her book together with a clap. “Have Mr. Skelton to dinner, by all means—just as we would have the Blairs, or any other of the neighbours. I don’t care a fig for his elegance. We are just as good as the Skeltons any day; and any one of us—papa, or you, or I—is twice as good-looking as Mr. Skelton.�
Sylvia was fond of disparaging Skelton both to herself and to other people.
“Sylvia! Sylvia, my child!� screamed Mrs. Shapleigh; “your vanity is very unladylike, and, besides, it is sinful, too. Nobody ever heard me say such a thing, although I had a much greater reputation for good looks than you ever had. But if my glass pleased me, I never said anything.�