Mrs. Brown looked with a curious pitying glance at the woman, who was old, yet had never given up the pretensions of youth. She was nearly twenty years younger, and saw the futility of these pretensions with perfect lucidity of vision; but there was kindness as well as pity in her eyes. Did not her glass say anything to this old woman, that she should talk of comparison between her and Lady William’s mature but unfaded years? Did not common sense say anything? As Mrs. Brown was much more near to Lady William’s age than Mrs. Swinford’s, the case was perfectly clear to her eyes.
‘No, I do not suppose so,’ Mrs. Swinford said; ‘and my hope is that he will tire of it presently. What attraction can he find in a country village in England? There is nothing. His philanthropy, bah! his people, ridiculous! It is ignorance that makes him talk of his people as if he were a great potentate, when he is only a country gentleman.’
‘It is his breeding,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘How was he to find out the difference in Paris? and you always treated him, you who are, as I tell you, a great lady by nature, as if he were a grand seigneur.’
‘I must be patient,’ said Mrs. Swinford; ‘it is difficult, but I must be patient: I gave him three months to be sick of the life, and the half of the time is not gone; I don’t think he will hold out a month more——’
‘Unless there should in the meantime arise some other attraction.’
‘What other attraction?’ Mrs. Swinford caught her visitor by the arm. ‘An attraction—in this village? Artémise, you have heard of something! A woman? who is she? I must know, I must know!’
‘Do not be frightened. But I think you are imprudent, Cecile; you should have filled the house with company, you should have come back in a storm of gaiety; he should have known nothing of the village at all.’
‘Who is she?’ said Mrs. Swinford, tightening her grasp on the other’s arm; ‘some wretched girl with a baby face.’
‘It is no girl, it is nothing of that sort; it is a woman as old, nearly as old as I am. I told you I had a young admirer too, who comes to me for the superiority of my conversation, and my knowledge of the world. So does Leo; to discuss the world, and things in general, and the topics of the day.’
‘You are either laughing at everything, as has been your custom all your life, or you are announcing to me a great danger; the loss of all my power.’