‘To be sure,’ said the Archdeacon’s wife, sitting up in her chair—‘dear me—it is so strange to think of the time when one was young——’
‘Emily was a little thing who was about everywhere—the child of the parish I used to call her. A girl who has lost her mother is so often like that, everybody’s child. I don’t say it’s not very nice as long as they’re children. One gets more used to them. She was always dancing about through everybody’s house—thank you, General, I couldn’t take any more cake—there wasn’t a house in the parish, rich or poor, but Emily was dancing out and in——’
‘Very bad for the child,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen.
‘Do you think so?’ said Miss Grey; ‘well, I don’t know, as long as she was a child.’
‘If it was bad for the child, my dear, the woman has come handsomely out of it,’ said the General, carrying the cake into the dark corner to Mrs. Kendal. ‘My dear lady, one morsel more—to keep me company.’
‘Oh! General, on that inducement—but only a very, very small piece—— ’
‘It’s bad when the child grows into a woman,’ said little Miss Grey, shaking her little head; ‘she was as dear a girl as ever lived—not one of them now is fit to hold the candle to what she was. Mab?—Mab’s a darling, the honestest little straightforward thing: and she would have been safer than Emily—she would never have been taken in—as her mother was.’
‘Dear Miss Grey,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, ‘another cup of tea: and you were going to tell us about the Swinfords—for we all know there was something: she was a Seymour, wasn’t she, of a very good family?’
‘But foreign blood in her,’ said Miss Grey; ‘I think her mother was a Russian; she always was fond of foreign things and foreign ways; he was a dear, good, quiet man. It never came into his head that anything could go wrong——’
‘No: why should it, in a quiet neighbourhood like this——?’