“What she said was about Innocent,” said Nelly, restraining herself with an effort; “that we ought not to keep her here—that she should be sent out as a governess—I don’t know how much more hard-hearted nonsense. I can’t tell how she dared to speak so to mamma.”
“That woman would dare anything,” said Molyneux. “About Innocent? Well, I don’t know that she was very wrong; that girl will turn into a dreadful burden one day or other if she is not made to marry somebody. I can’t think what your mother meant, when she had such a chance, by letting Longueville slip through her fingers. So that’s why he’s here, I suppose? I hate that man, John Vane; always poking himself where he is not wanted.”
“I suppose mamma must have wanted him or she would not have asked him,” said Nelly. “We could not have an empty place at table.”
“Oh, that’s why you are cross, is it?” said Ernest, with a vain laugh; “but, Nelly, you must not really expect that I can always be doing duty at those family parties. A family party is the thing I most hate in the world.”
“Fortunately for mamma, Mr. Vane is not of your opinion,” said Nelly. It was the first time she had attempted anything like self-assertion. She had never stood at bay before.
CHAPTER XXIX.
INNOCENT’S OUTSET IN THE WORLD.
In consequence of this interview between Mrs. Eastwood and John Vane it was arranged that Innocent should pay Miss Vane a visit at the High Lodge, near Sterborne, where that lady lived in an eccentric way of her own in an old house which her brother had abandoned to her, and which she had turned to a great many uses quite uncontemplated by her predecessors. “We are an eccentric race,” her brother had said, laughing; “but as it is my way to be good for nothing, so it is Lætitia’s way to be good for a great deal. The one of us neutralizes the other. I tell her she is trying to lay up a stock of superfluous merit on my account, one good result of having a brother a ne’er-do-well——”
“Why should you call yourself a ne’er-do-well!” said Mrs. Eastwood. Nelly had already asked the same question furtively with a glance, and there was a warmth in the little outburst of partisanship by which these two women defended him against himself which warmed the man’s heart.
“Because, alas! it is true,” he said; “you got this character of me before you knew me? Ah, I was sure you had! and you see it is realized; but Lætitia is good for us both. Some part of her goodness is after a droll fashion, I confess. She is prodigiously High Church; she keeps a poor little parson in petticoats and a cloak, whom she calls father, and treats, I fear, as she treats her housemaids; but mind, she is very good both to the housemaids and the parson. I think Father Featherstone is a mistake; but if there ever was a good woman bent on doing good and succeeding in the attempt, it is my sister Lætitia. She will be very good to Innocent. You need not fear to trust her in my sister’s hands.”
“I like men who believe in their sisters,” said Mrs. Eastwood with a smile.