‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Plowden, with a start, ‘let me pour it out! Or Emily will do so, I am sure, with pleasure, if you will permit. It is so awkward for a gentleman——’
‘Pray do not trouble yourself. Leo can manage it very well, or he can ring for some one if he wants help. And you, Emily, have a daughter, too?’
‘Yes, I have a daughter.’
‘Quite young? She can scarcely be grown up. I do not remember many dates, but there are two or three—— Eighteen perhaps, or a little less, or more?’
‘She will not be eighteen for some months.’
‘And pretty? Like you? Do you see anything of the family? Do they take any notice of the child?’
‘To tell the truth,’ said Lady William, ‘my child and I have been very happy in our cottage, and we have not thought much of any family—save our own very small family of two.’
She had flushed with suppressed anger, but with an evident desire to keep her feelings concealed, answered the questions very deliberately and in a tone of studied calm.
‘Ah, I recognise you in that! always proud: but not prudent. One must not despise a family, especially when it has a fine title. You ought to consider, my dear Emily, how important it may be for the child; your excellent sister-in-law,’ said Mrs. Swinford, turning with her wonted smile to Mrs. Plowden, ‘thoroughly recognises that.’
Mrs. Plowden, thus unexpectedly referred to, was taken in an undignified moment, when she had just begun to sip her first mouthful of very hot tea. She had felt that a second interruption in the very midst of what she had been saying was too much to be forgiven; but on being appealed to in this marked manner she changed her mind, and perceived that it was only Mrs. Swinford’s way. She swallowed the hot tea hastily, to her great discomfort, in her haste to respond.