Twenty minutes later she returns to her morning-room with a discouraged air, and draws off her gloves.
“He was not at home,” she says, in answer to her husband’s look of interrogation. “The door was shut, and his card was stuck under the bell with ‘Out’ written upon it. I suppose I could have done no good if I had seen him. For I met Scott-Gwynne in the street, and he told me he had just heard Mr. Fanshawe saying in the reading-room at the Travellers’ that Wilfrid had refused formally, and signed his refusal. Fanshawe was present.”
“But Mr. Fanshawe as a Socialist, as a Radical, must approve the refusal?” says Cicely Seymour, from where she sits by a stand of Malmaison roses.
Southwold laughs grimly.
“Fanshawe thinks all wealth should be equally distributed; but so long as it isn’t so, he gets all he can for himself, and considers everybody should do the same who has the opportunity.”
Cicely is silent.
“I suppose Wilfrid has gone to have tea and shrimps with the washerwoman,” says Lady Southwold. “Cicely, give me some tea, please. I fear shrimps are an unknown joy to us.”
Cicely rises and goes over to the tea-table.
“Are you really positive that he is going to marry this girl?” asks his aunt, as Cicely hands her a cup and some muffin.
“The mother of the girl said so,” replies Cicely, coldly. “She did not, herself, seem to care about it.”