‘Miss Grey!’ said Mrs. Kendal mildly, out of the dark.
‘Nelly, Nelly!’ cried Mrs. FitzStephen, who was the one most intimate with the culprit.
‘James Plowden,’ repeated Miss Grey, ‘is no Solomon, as you all very well know. I am saying nothing against him—he’s a very good man: but though he hasn’t very much wisdom, if he thought one of his girls was to get a prince for her husband in the same way as his sister got hers, he is not the man I think him, if he ever let one of them put a foot inside that door.’
They all said ‘Lady William!’ with a joint cry, which, though it was very quietly uttered by each individual, rose into quite an outcry when uttered by the whole.
‘Poor little Emily!’ said Miss Grey, putting up her handkerchief to her eyes, ‘that’s how I think of her—though if she gets any pleasure out of her title, poor child, if you can call that a title——’
‘Of course it is a title—she takes precedence of all of us,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen.
‘A courtesy title,’ said the General.
‘Dear, I never knew there was anything against it,’ said Mrs. Kendal.
‘I hope she gets some pleasure out of it, poor dear,’ said Miss Grey; ‘little else has she ever got. A horrible man, who never, I believe, made himself pleasant to her, never for one day: and a horrible life for I don’t know how many years. If there had been a mother, or if he hadn’t been—— well, I won’t call him names now he’s in his grave—such a sacrifice would never have been made.’
‘But I suppose she liked him at the time,’ said one of the ladies.