“Stay a moment, Johnny, my own dear——”
“What’s the matter, mother? Oh, I know; you’ve heard of this last offer. But if I take any I’ll take St. Ermengilde’s, where I could still go on living at home, the Signor says. It’s less money, but so long as I can help him and see her now and again, and please you——”
“Ah, John, your mother’s last; but that’s natural,” said Mrs. Purcell, shaking her head, “quite natural. I don’t complain. Is it another organ you’ve got the offer of? Well, to be sure! and there are folks that say merit isn’t done justice to! John, I’ve been hearing something,” said the housekeeper, putting out her hand to draw him to her; “something as perhaps you ought to know.”
The young man looked at her eagerly. In this place he bore a very different aspect from that under which he had appeared to Lottie. Here it was he who was master of the situation, the centre of a great many hopes and wishes. He looked at her closely in the dusk, which made it hard to see what was in her face. He was a good son, but he was his mother’s social superior, and there was a touch of authority, even in the kindness of his voice.
“Something I ought to know? I know it already: that Mr. Ridsdale has been visiting at the Lodges. That is nothing so extraordinary. If you think a little attention from a fashionable fop will outweigh the devotion of years!” said the young man, with a flush of high-flown feeling. He had a great deal of sentiment and not very much education, and naturally he was high-flown. “People may say what they like,” he went on in an agitated voice, “but merit does carry the day. They’ve offered me St. Ermengilde over the heads of half-a-dozen. Is it possible, can you suppose, that she should be so blind!”
“That wasn’t it,” said Mrs. Purcell quietly; “it’s something quite different, my dear. Shut the door, that we mayn’t have old Pick coming in again (it was he that told me), and you shall hear.”
COLLECTION
OF
B R I T I S H A U T H O R S
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 1824.
WITHIN THE PRECINCTS BY MRS. OLIPHANT.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.