“Oh,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “Mrs Burgess, is it not? I hope your good husband is well—But”—and he stepped forward—“may I ask,” addressing Miss Halliday, “if it is the case that—that Mrs Derwent and her daughters are living here for the present?”
“It is so,” said the milliner, with gentle and half-deprecating courtesy. “I am sorry.”—Then remembering Stasy’s presence, she turned to her. “This is Miss Anastasia. She can explain better. Perhaps, Miss Stasy, you will take the gentleman into the drawing-room till your mamma returns. I daresay she will not be long now.”
Stasy put down on the counter a trail of roses which she was still holding, and laid her pretty little hand, with almost childlike confidence, in Sir Adam’s, already extended to meet it. The old man looked at her with a curiously mingled expression. Something about her, as well as her name, recalled her mother; still more, perhaps, her grandfather. For, though Stasy was at what is commonly called the “awkward age,” in her very unformed, half-wild gracefulness there was the suggestion of the underlying refinement and courtliness of bearing, for which Sir Adam’s old friend had been remarkable.
“My dear child; my poor, dear child!” he exclaimed.
Then the two disappeared—the young girl’s hand still held firmly in the old man’s grasp—through the door at the end of the shop, which led into the Derwents’ own quarters, to Miss Halliday’s intense satisfaction, and Mrs Burgess’s no less profound discomfiture and amazement.
“Dear, dear!” she ejaculated. “What’s going to happen now?” and she turned to Miss Halliday.
“I don’t understand you, ma’am,” she said quietly.
“Why, it’s plain to see what I mean,” returned the other. “Old Sir Adam Nigel treating Stasy Derwent as if she were his grand-daughter! How does he know anything about them?”
“She is not that, certainly,” said Miss Halliday, referring to the first part of Mrs Burgess’s speech, “but she is the grand-daughter of his very oldest and dearest friend, Mr Fenning—the Honourable and Reverend—and of his wife, Lady Anastasia Bourne, to give her maiden name,” rolling out the words with exquisite enjoyment. “If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Burgess,” she continued, “I think, from the first, you’ve just a little mistaken the position of my dear ladies, if I may make bold to call them so.”
For a worm will turn, and all Miss Halliday’s timidity vanished in indignation, hitherto repressed, at the behaviour of the doctor’s wife.