The milliner looked uncomfortable; she had delicacy enough to know that any distinct expression of sympathy in such a case would be an impertinence.
“You may find it pleasanter in the winter,” she said. “There are some nice young ladies in your neighbourhood—Lady Hebe Shetland at East Moddersham, now! She is a sweet young lady.”
“Yes,” said Blanche, speaking for the first time. “We know her a little, but still it is quite different from what it used to be when mamma was a girl here.”
“Well yes, to be sure,” said Miss Halliday, “for it was your dear mamma’s home; and no one was more respected in all the country-side, as I’ve heard my aunt say, than your dear grandpapa, the late Mr Fenning. It was quite a different thing in the next vicars time; his wife and daughters were not, so to say, in the county society at all.”
“Do you mean the Flemings?” asked Blanche; “yes, I have heard of them. I hope people don’t confuse mamma with them; sometimes I’ve been afraid they may do.”
Miss Halliday grew a little pink again.
“Well, Miss, as you’ve mentioned it,” she said, “though I wouldn’t have made free to speak of it myself, I’m afraid there may have been some mistake of the kind in one or two quarters, and seeing that it was so, I made bold to set it right; telling those that had made the mistake, that your dear mamma came of a very high family indeed, as my dear aunt has often told me, and that on both sides.”
Blanche could not help smiling, though she was touched by the little milliner’s loyalty.
“Thank you, Miss Halliday,” she said. “I should certainly be sorry for mamma’s family to be confused with the Flemings, not so much because they were—well, scarcely gentlepeople by birth—but because they were not particularly nice in themselves. It is misleading that the two names are so like, and I am glad you explained it.”
“I won’t mention names,” said Miss Halliday, beaming with satisfaction; “but it will all come right in the end, you will see, my dear young ladies. And now I think tea must be ready in the drawing-room, if you’ll be so good as to step that way.”