“It is better she should not be shy,” said Tasie. “You remember how she drove those people from the hotel to church. They have come ever since. They are quite afraid of her. Oh, there are some good things in her, some very good things.”
“We are the more hard to please, after knowing Frances,” repeated Mrs Gaunt. “But when a girl has been like that, used to the best society—— By the way, Mr Durant, you who know everything, are sure to know—Is she the Honourable? For my part I can’t quite make it out.”
Mr Durant put on his spectacles to look at her, as if such a question passed the bounds of the permissible. He was very imposing when he looked at any one through those spectacles with an air of mingled astonishment and superiority. “Why should she be an Honourable?” he said.
Mrs Gaunt felt as if she would like to sink into the abysses of the earth—that is, through the floor of the loggia, whatever might be the dreadful depths underneath. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said meekly. “I—I only thought—her mother being a—a titled person, a—a viscountess in her own right——”
“But my dear lady,” said Mr Durant, with a satisfaction in his superior knowledge which was almost unspeakable, “Lady Markham is not a viscountess in her own right. Dear, no! She is not a viscountess at all. She is plain Mrs Waring, and nothing else, if right was right. Society only winks good-naturedly at her retaining the title, which she certainly, if there is any meaning in the peerage at all, forfeits by marrying a commoner.”
Mrs Durant and Tasie both looked with great admiration at their head and instructor as he thus spoke. “You may be sure Mr Durant says nothing that he is not quite sure of,” said the wife, crushing any possible scepticism on the part of the inquirer; and “Papa knows such a lot,” added Tasie, awed, yet smiling, on her side.
“Oh, is that all?” said Mrs Gaunt, greatly subdued. “But then, Lord Markham—calls her his sister, you know.”
“The nobility,” said Mr Durant, “are always very scrupulous about relationships; and she is his step-sister. He couldn’t qualify the relationship by calling her so. A common person might do so, but not a man of high breeding, like Lord Markham—that is all.”
“I suppose you must be right,” said Mrs Gaunt. “The General said so too. But it does seem very strange to me that of the same woman’s children, and she a lady of title, one should be a lord, and the other have no sort of distinction at all.” They all smiled upon her blandly, every one ready with a new piece of information, and much sympathy for her ignorance, which Mrs Gaunt, seeing that it was she that was likely to be related to Lord Markham, and not any of the Durants, felt that she could not bear; so she jumped up hastily and declared that she must be going, that the General would be waiting for her. “I hope you will come over some evening, and I will ask the Warings, and Tasie must bring her music. I am sure you would like to hear George’s violin. He is getting on so well, with Constance to play his accompaniments;” and before any one could reply to her, Mrs Gaunt had hurried away.
It is painful not to have time to get out your retort; and these excellent people turned instinctively upon each other to discharge the unflown arrows. “It is so very easy, with a little trouble, to understand the titles, complimentary and otherwise, of our own nobility,” said Mr Durant, shaking his head.