"My dear," said Mrs. Methven, with a sad sinking of disappointment in her heart after her previous exultation, yet determined that her sympathy should not fail, "if you had a good wife no one would be so happy as I—a good girl who would help you to live a good life."
Here he came up to her again, and, leaning against the table, burst into a laugh. But there was no mirth in it. A sense of the ludicrous is not always mirthful.
"A girl," he said, "mother, who would bring another fortune to the family: who would deluge us with money, and fill out the lines of the estates, and make peace—peace between me and—And not a bad girl either," he added with a softening tone, "far too good for me. An honest, upright little soul, only not—the best; only not the one who—would hate me if she knew——"
"Walter," said Mrs. Methven, trembling, "I don't understand you. Your words seem very wild to me. I am all confused with them, and my brain seems to be going. What is it you mean? Oh, if you would tell me all you mean and not only a part which I cannot understand!"
There never happens in any house a conversation of a vital kind, which is not interrupted at a critical moment by the entrance of the servants, those legitimate intruders who can never be staved off. It was Symington now who came in with tea, which, with a woman's natural desire to prevent any suspicion of agitation in the family, she accepted. When he had gone the whole atmosphere was changed. Walter had seated himself by the fire with the newspapers which had just come in, and all the emotion and attendrissement were over. He said to her, looking up from his reading—
"By-the-bye, mother, Julia Herbert is here with some cousins; they will be sure to call on you. But I don't want to have any more to do with them than we can help. You will manage that?"
"Julia Herbert," she said. The countenance which had melted into so much softness, froze again and grew severe. "Here! why should she be here? Indeed, I hope I shall be able to manage that, as you say."
But oh, what ignoble offices for a woman who would have given her life for him as he knew! To frighten away Underwood, to "manage" Julia. Patience! so long as it was for her boy.