Sir Edward shook his head, and looked after her as she withdrew. He looked as if he had said, “I knew how it would be;” and yet he was concerned and sorry. “I have seen such cases before,” he said, when Winnie had left the room, turning to Aunt Agatha and Mary, and once more shaking his head: “neither will give in an inch. They know that they are in a miserable condition, but it is neither his fault nor hers. That is how it always is. And only the bystanders can see what faults there are on both sides.”
“But I don’t think Winnie is so exacting,” said Aunt Agatha, with natural partisanship. “I think it is worse than that. She has been telling me two or three things——”
“Oh, yes,” said Sir Edward, with mild despair, “they can tell you dozens of things. No doubt he could, on his side. It is always like that; and to think that nothing would have any effect on her!—she would hear no sort of reason—though you know very well you were warned that he was not immaculate before she married him: nothing would have any effect.”
“Oh, Sir Edward!” cried Aunt Agatha, with tears in her eyes: “it is surely not the moment to remind us of that.”
“For my part, I think it is just the moment,” said Sir Edward; and he shook his head, and made a melancholy pause. Then, with an obvious effort to change the subject, he looked round the room, as if that personage might, perhaps, be hidden in some corner, and asked where was Hugh?
“He has gone to show Nelly Askell the way to the Lady’s Well,” said Mary, who could not repress a smile.
“Ah! he seems disposed to show Nelly Askell the way to a great many things,” said Sir Edward. “There it is again you see! Not that I have a word to say against that little thing. She is very nice, and pretty enough; though no more to be compared to what Winnie was at her age—— But you’ll see Hugh will have engaged himself and forestalled his life before we know where we are.”
“It would have been better had they been a little older,” said Mary; “but otherwise everything is very suitable; and Nelly is very good, and very sweet——”
Again Sir Edward sighed. “You must know that Hugh might have done a very great deal better,” he said. “I don’t say that I have any particular objections, but only it is an instance of your insanity in the way of marriage—all you Setons. You go and plunge into it head foremost, without a moment’s reflection; and then, of course, when leisure comes—— I don’t mean you, Mary. What I was saying had no reference to you. So far as I am aware, you were always very happy, and gave your friends no trouble. Though in one way, of course, it ought to be considered that you did the worst of all.”
“Captain Askell’s family is very good,” said Mary, by the way of turning off too close an inquiry into her own affairs; “and he is just in the same position as Hugh’s father was; and I love Nelly like a child of my own. I feel as if she ought to have been a child of my own. She and Will used to lie in the same cradle——”