‘They are almost too young for that, as yet,’ said Leo, with good nature.
‘Too young! This will be Addie’s third season, and not so much as a nibble. If you don’t think that serious, by Jove, I do—and Betty treading on her heels, and the little ones beginning to perk their heads out of the schoolroom. The poor old mother, it’s enough to turn her gray. And when she bids me up and do something for myself, I can’t turn on her, Swinford, I can’t indeed, though it’s hard on a fellow all the same. It ought all to have come to us, it ought indeed—without any encumbrance, the advertisements say.’
‘The encumbrance,’ said Leo, who was half angry and half amused, ‘is not a thing you will find it so easy to reckon with, my poor Will. She has her own ways of thinking, and a will of her own.’
‘Ah!’ said Lord Will, with much calm. He was not afraid, it would appear, of Mab. He thought of the little roundabout thing whom he had seen on his previous visit, not, certainly, with much alarm, but with a sense that if she resisted his advances (which was so very unlikely) he would not be inconsolable. Anyhow, he would have done what duty and his parents required of him. It was very satisfactory to him that Mrs. Swinford did not come downstairs that evening, for the recollection of his last interview with her was not agreeable to him in the present changed circumstances. How he was to explain to her the motif of his conduct now, and how the failure of all her information—her hints and prophecies of evil—was to be got over, did there ever again ensue a tête-à-tête between the hostess and her visitor, he could not tell. Mrs. Swinford was much more alarming to Lord Will than the little cousin whom he came to woo.
The first assurance received by Lady William that all was well was thus conveyed to her by the second visit of the young man who bore her husband’s name, who came stalking into the cottage alone on the morning after his arrival as if he had been one of the intimates there, and addressed her as Aunt William, to her great surprise and agitation. Not a word did Lord Will say of his uncle’s money or the proceedings of Messrs. Fox and Round. Watcham was so handy for town, was what the young man said. It was so easy to run down for a breath of fresh air: and boxed up in town, as it was his hard fate to be, nobody could think what a pleasure it was to get into the country from time to time.
‘I had no idea that you were such a lover of the country,’ Lady William said.
‘Not the country in the abstract,’ said Lord Will; ‘but a pleasant little place like this within an hour’s ride—with such a pleasant fellow as Swinford always throwing open his doors—a man with really a nice place, and the best chef I’ve met with, out of the very best houses, don’t you know.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Lady William; ‘I should not think of asking you to meet my cook after that.’
‘Oh, delighted,’ said Lord Will. ‘I don’t demand a chef like Swinford’s everywhere; besides, there’s not a dozen of his quality in the world—brought him from Paris with them, don’t you know. Women don’t often care much for what they eat—but when they do——!’
‘Yes,’ said Lady William, with great gravity, ‘when women are bad, as people say, they are worse than men; which is a compliment or not, according as we receive it.’