"What an awful woman," said Mr. Dean, addressing himself after her departure. "I declare," he added, speaking to Rupert, who immediately after entered the room, "I would not marry Mrs. Mortomley if she had twenty thousand a year."
"How rare it is to find two people so unanimous in opinion," remarked Rupert with a sneer. He did not like Mr. Dean at the best of times, and at that moment he had a grudge against him, because he knew it was Mr. Dean who must have told Mr. Forde about that twenty guineas for a sketch of the small Lenore. "I am sure poor mistaken Dolly would not marry you if you settled fifty thousand per annum on her. But what has she been saying to cause such vehement expression of opinion?"
"She says you and your sister are rats; that you have eaten of the best in the ship, and leave it now it is sinking."
"Upon my honour I am afraid Mrs. Mortomley is right," was the reply. "Hers is a view of the question which did not strike me before; but it is not open to dispute. Still what would the dear little soul have one do? Stay with the vessel till it disappears? If she speak the word, I for one am willing to do so."
"I hoped to hear common sense from one member of this household at all events," was Mr. Dean's reply, uttered loftily and contemptuously.
"So you would from me if I were not in love with my aunt," Rupert answered tranquilly. "More or less, less sometimes than more, I have always been in love with Dolly. She is not pretty, except occasionally, and she can be very disagreeable; and she is some years older than myself; and she is an adept at spending money; and upon the whole she is not what the world considers a desirable wife for a struggling man. But she has—to use a very vulgar expression—pluck, and by Jove if I live to be a hundred, I shall never see a woman I admire so thoroughly as my uncle's wife. But this is sentimental," Mr. Halling proceeded. "And I stifle it at the command of common sense. On Tuesday I leave Homewood for those desirable apartments in which you wish me to play propriety to the future lady of The Elms."
Through the rain Mr. Dean drove away foaming with rage. Could he have lived his time over again, no Miss Halling would ever have been asked to grace his abode. No young person, with a vagabond brother in a velvet suit, should ever have been mistress of The Elms.
But Mrs. Mortomley had put the case in a nutshell. He must marry Antonia, though Mortomley were bankrupt ten thousand times over.
And Antonia knew it, and under the roof which had sheltered her for so many a long night, she returned thanks for the fact to whatever deity she actually worshipped.