“Monday,” replied the lady. “And that great trollopy Maria Jane of theirs. Why they couldn’t have her at home, I can’t imagine. Mrs. William writes she is so much improved by that new school, she is growing quite a fine girl. Fine girl indeed! She will be six feet if she doesn’t leave growing soon.”
“Why isn’t she at school now?” enquired Mr. Baxter, lazily.
“There was a fortnight’s holiday because of some death in the governess’s family,” replied Mrs. Baxter, carelessly. “By-the-by that reminds me Mr. Baxter, Phillips wants to go home for a week. His sister is dead, and he wants to go to the funeral. So inconvenient, too, just as Mr. and Mrs. William are coming. I can’t abide any one but Phillips driving me; it shakes my nerves to bits, and makes me all over ‘ysterical.’ ” (It was, to do her justice, very seldom that Mrs. Baxter fell short in this way, but now and then, when somewhat excited, her h’s were apt to totter.)
“Tell him he can’t go, then,” said Monsieur, sleepily, for the combined influences of his three glasses of port, the fire and the blue and gold sofa, were growing too much for him. And to tell the truth for Mrs. Baxter too! So, till startled by the entrance of Jeames and tea, the millionaire and his wife slumbered peacefully (though in one case sonorously), on each side of that marvel of tiles and fire-brick, burnished steel and resplendent gilding, which to them served as the representation of their “ain fireside.”
Wednesday came, and at six o’clock in the evening thereof, Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin, four-and-sixpence the poorer for the fly which had conveyed them from their “back-street” to the Millington West End, where the Baxter residence was situated, made their appearance in the blue and gold drawing-room.
Somewhat against her wishes Geoffrey had insisted on Marion’s attiring herself in a manner more befitting the wife of the rich Mr. Baldwin of Brackley Manor, than the helpmeet of one of Mr. Baxter’s clerks on a salary one hundred and fifty pounds a year.
“When your dresses are worn out, and I can’t afford to buy you more,” he said with some slight bitterness in his tone, “then you may go about in brown stuff if you like. Or black more likely,” he added, in an undertone, with as near an approach to a cynical smile as was possible for him, “for I shan’t live to see it. By then it is to be hoped you will be free of the curse I have been to you one way and another, my poor darling!” And with the last words, though only whispered to himself, there stole into his voice, spite of his bitter mood, an inflection of exquisite tenderness.
So the dress in which Marion Baldwin made her début into “cotton at home,” socially speaking, though plain, was of the richest and best as to fashion, colour, and material.
Mr. Baxter positively started as he caught sight of her. Mrs. Baxter even, felt a little taken aback, not by the woman herself, but by her clothes, the quality of which her feminine acuteness was not slow to estimate as it deserved. Into such particulars of course Mr. Baxter, in common with his sex, did not enter, but the effect of the whole, the tout ensemble presented by “Baldwin’s wife,” struck him with admiration and surprise.
“Country-bred!” he muttered to himself. “It seems to me, my dear Sophia, you have made a little mistake hereabouts.”