'Norah Drummond!' said Mr Burton, grinding his teeth. 'By Jove! they talk about a man's pleasant sins being against him; but there is nothing so bad in that way as his unpleasant virtues, I can tell you. If all the annoyance I have had through these two women could be reckoned up——'
'I do not know what annoyance you may have had yourself,' said Mrs Burton, in her cold, judicial way. 'I have seen nothing to complain of. But now I confess it begins to be unpleasant. She has more influence over Ned than any of us. He danced with her last night before any one else. He is always there, or meeting her at other places. I have observed it for some time. But you have done nothing to stop it, Mr Burton. Sometimes I have thought you approved, from the way you have allowed things to go on.'
'I approve!' he cried, with something like horror.
'How was I to know? I do not say it is of very much importance. Ned, of course, will follow his own taste, not ours.'
'But, by Jove, he sha'n't!' cried Mr Burton. 'By Jove, he shall take himself out of this, and make his own way, if I hear any more nonsense. What! after all I have done to set them up in the world—after all I have gone through!'
He was affected, whatever was the cause. There was something like agitation about him. He was changed altogether from the confident man of former times. His wife looked at him with a little surprise, and came to this conclusion quite suddenly. She had not noticed it when he was among other people, playing his part of host with an offensive hospitality which often annoyed her, and which the Marchioness, for example, scarcely hesitated to show her contempt of. But now, when there was no one present, when he was free to look as he pleased, Mrs Burton found out all at once that her husband was changed. Was it merely that he was older, tired with last night's dissipation, not so able to defy late hours, and supper and champagne, as he had once done? She was not a woman to rest in so superficial a view of affairs; but for the moment these were the questions she asked herself, as she looked at him with calm yet undeniable surprise.
'You seem to be excited, Mr Burton,' she said.
'Excited!' he cried; 'and good reason, too; with you sitting there as cold as a little fish, never thinking of the interests of your family, talking of Ned thwarting me as if it was nothing! If I were excited it would be little wonder, I think.'
'I have no desire that Ned should thwart you,' she said; 'on the contrary, it is my own wish. He will never make a good man of business. A marriage with one of the Merewethers, or a girl in that position, with your money, Mr Burton, would be the best thing for him. He might get into Parliament, and do all that I once hoped for you; but what I hoped is neither here nor there.'
Mrs Burton was only human, though she was so philosophical; and this was a stroke in her own defence.