“Nobody could be better qualified——”
“Do you really think so? I’m so glad you are learning to do me justice. It’s all for her good—you know it is. To marry and have children of her own is better than acting mother to another person’s children. Oh yes, they are her own brothers and sisters now; but they will grow up, and if Susie does not marry, what prospect has she? Those who really love her should take all these things into account.”
Mrs Ainslie spoke these sensible words with many little gestures and airs, which exasperated the older woman perhaps all the more that there was nothing to be said against the utterance itself. But at that moment she heard a step that she knew well upon the gravel outside, and of all people in the world to meet and divine who Robert was, and publish it abroad, this interloper, this stranger, who had awakened a warmer feeling of hostility in Mrs Ogilvy’s bosom than any one had done before, was the last. She sat breathless, making no answer, while she heard him enter the house: he had been in the garden with his pipe and his newspaper—for it was still morning, and not an hour when the Hewan was on guard against visitors. His large step, so distinctly a man’s step, paused in the hall. Mrs Ogilvy raised her voice a little, to warn him, as she made an abstract reply.
“It’s rare,” she said, “that we’re so thankful as we ought to be—to them that deal with us for our good.”
“Do you hear that step in the passage?” cried Mrs Ainslie. “Ah, I know who it is. It is dear James—it is Mr Logan, I mean. I felt sure he would not be long behind me. Mayn’t I let him in?”
She rose in a flutter, and rushing to the door threw it open, with an air of eager welcome and arch discovery; but recoiled a step before the unknown personage, large, silent, with his big beard and watchful aspect, who stood listening and uncertain outside. “Oh!” she cried, and fell back, not without a start of dismay.
Mrs Ogilvy’s pride did not tolerate any denial of her son, who stood there, making signs to her which she declined to notice. “This is my son,” she said, “the master of the house. He has just come back after a long time away.”
“Oh—Mr Ogilvy!” the lady faltered. She was anxious to please everybody, but she was evidently frightened, though it was difficult to tell why. “How pleased you must be to have your son come back at last!”
He paused disconcerted on the threshold. “I did not mean to—disturb you, mother—I did not know there was anybody here.”
“Don’t upbraid me, please, with coming at such untimely hours,” she cried. Mrs Ainslie was in a flutter of consciousness, rubbing her gloved hands, laughing a little hysterically, but more than ever anxious to please, and instinctively putting on her little panoply of airs and graces. “I had business. I had indeed. It was not a mere call meaning nothing. Your mother will tell you, Mr Ogilvy——” She let her veil drop over her face, with a tremulous movement, and almost cringed while she flattered him, with little flutterings and glances of incomprehensible meaning.