“Poor Markham!” she said, with a quick revulsion of feeling. “After all, it is a little hard, is it not, that he should have nothing brighter than that to look to in his life?”
“Than you?” said Claude. “If you ask my opinion, I don’t think so. I think he’s a lucky fellow. An old mother, I don’t deny, might be a bore. An old lady, half blind, never hearing what you say, sitting by the fire—like the mothers in books, or the Mrs Nickleby kind. But you are as young and handsome and bright as any of them—keeping everything right for him, asking nothing. Upon my word, I think he is very well off. I wish I were in his place.”
Lady Markham was pleased. Affectionate flattery of this kind is always sweet to a woman. She laughed, and said he was a gay deceiver. “But, my dear boy, you will make me think a great deal more of myself than I have any right to think.”
“You ought to think more of yourself. And so you really do not think that Con——? In many ways, dear Lady Markham, I feel that Con—understood me better than any one else—except you.”
“I think you are right, Claude,” she said, with a grave face.
“I am beginning to feel quite sure I am right. When she writes, does she never say anything about me?”
“Of course, she always—asks for you.”
“Is that all? Asking does not mean much.”
“What more could she say? Of course she knows that she has lost her place in your affection by her own rashness.”
“Not lost, Lady Markham. It is not so easy to do that.”