“That is just the danger of it,” said Lady Frogmore, nodding her head. “If it had been one of her own daughters I would not have said a word. Her own daughters are well enough, but this girl! My poor dear John has been made a victim, Frogmore. He has been made a victim. I wish he had broken his leg or something before he came to this house.”
“Nonsense,” said Lord Frogmore, “he might have met her anywhere else as well as in this house.”
“It’s all a deep laid scheme,” continued the dowager, behind her fan. “What that woman has against my poor dear John I can’t tell, but it is she that has done it. And mark my words, Frogmore——”
“How many more words am I to mark,” said Frogmore peevishly—then he added, in the freedom of close relationship: “All you say about poor Lady Sillinger is the merest nonsense. She’s as good a woman as ever lived.”
“Mark my words, Frogmore,” repeated the dowager, “that girl will never rest till she has got you out of the way.”
“Me!” he laughed, “set your mind at rest,” he said, “I am not in her way at all. She means to make a friend of me.”
“She’ll make a friend of you, and then she’ll make you something quite different. She will never be happy,” said Lady Frogmore, “till she has got us all out of the way.”
“Oh! come, come! We don’t live in the fourteenth century,” Frogmore said.
And next day, notwithstanding all these prognostications of harm, John and Letitia were married, and set off for their honeymoon. And whatever her intentions might be there was no longer any possibility of shutting out the Honorable Mrs. John Parke from the amenities of the family. She was kissed. She was blessed. Old slippers were flung after her, and if she had been the most desirable wife in the world, no more could have been done by the family to put the best face upon this event before the eyes of a too quick-sighted world.