Colonel Kingsward was very courteous to his visitor. He received her visit of sympathy with polite gratitude, accepting her excuse that so nearly connected as the families had been about to be, she could not be in town without coming to express her great regret and feeling for his family left motherless. Colonel Kingsward was very digne. He had the fullest sense of what was expected in his position, and he did not allow any other feeling to come in the way of that. He thanked Mrs. Leigh for her sympathy, and exaggerated his sense of her goodness in coming to express it. It was more, much more, than he had any right to expect. If there was any alleviation to his grief it was in the sense of the great kindness of friends—“and even of strangers,” he said, with a grave bow, which seemed to throw Mrs. Leigh indefinitely back into the regions of the unknown. This put her on her mettle at once.
“I do not feel like a stranger,” she said. “I have heard so much of your family—every member of it—through my son, Aubrey. I regret greatly that the connection which seemed to be so suitable should hang at all in doubt——”
“It does not hang in doubt,” said Colonel Kingsward, “I am sorry if you have got that impression. It is quite broken off—once for all.”
“That is a hard thing to say to Aubrey Leigh’s mother,” she said; “such a stigma should not be put upon a young man lightly.”
“I am sorry to discuss such matters with a lady. But I don’t know what you call lightly, Mrs. Leigh. I do not believe for a moment that you would give a daughter of your own—I do not know whether you have daughters of your own——”
“Two—happily married, thank heaven, and off my hands.”
“You will understand me so much the better. (Colonel Kingsward knew perfectly well all about Mrs. Leigh’s two daughters). I do not believe that you would have given one of them to a man—to whom another lady put forth a prior claim.”
“I am not at all sure of that. I should have ascertained first what kind of person put forth the claim——”
“We need not go into these details,” said Colonel Kingsward, waving his hand.
“It is most important to go into these details. I can give you every particular about this lady, Colonel Kingsward; and so can a dozen people, at least, who have no interest in the matter except to tell the truth.”