“She is like a lady at least?”
“Well, if you think that is like a lady. She must weigh twelve stone; not an ounce less.”
“If that is all you have to say against her,” said Mrs. Eastwood, who was herself a good weight; “but, Dick, dear, don’t talk any more nonsense. People have different ideas about beauty. And her father, the doctor? Is he a proper sort of person? Is he a gentleman? So much will depend upon that.”
“Her father, the doctor!” said Dick, with increasing contempt. He made a pause before he said any more to increase the effect. “He is a vet, and a horse-dealer, and a man without a bit of character, the jest of the place.”
Mrs. Eastwood gave a painful cry. Nelly echoed it feebly, standing in the middle of the room, with her face suddenly like ashes. Nelly’s mind was not primarily concerned with Frederick. The idea which flashed through it was, must Ernest know this? must he be told? She felt the humiliation keenly, with a pang such as she had never known before. It would humiliate her before him. He would feel humiliated by his connexion with her. For the moment it seemed to Nelly too bitter to be borne.
“Are you quite sure, Dick?” she said faltering. “Is there no mistake?”
“I will write to old Miss Eastwood,” said the mother. It was something to be able to get up, to hurry to her desk, to feel that she could do something, could inquire, at least, and was not compelled to sit down idle after receiving such news.
“What good can old Miss Eastwood do?” said Dick, who felt the authenticity of his own report to be called in question; and, indeed, old Miss Eastwood could do no good; to write to her to get further information seemed a kind of ease to the excitement of the moment. Before the letter was finished Mr. Vane came in, to make an innocent call, and hearing where Dick had been and how he had caught such a dreadful cold, proceeded to discourse upon Sterborne, lightly and easily, as strangers often do upon points of deadly interest to their hearers.
“I have been all over that country,” he said; “I used to know the Eastwoods, your relations, very well; indeed, I have a little box of a place close to Sterborne, which my sister is rather fond of. The Minster is the great attraction. Out of St. Peter’s at Rome, I don’t know a service so high—and she goes in for that sort of thing.”
“Do you know anybody called Batty?” cried Nelly in her haste. She had come to have a great confidence in the man who looked at her so kindly, with eyes that had a certain regret in them—regret which flattered and consoled her somehow, she could not tell why.