Mrs. Massarene was divided between wrath and emotion.
“I am sure you were a well-brought-up child from your cradle, and pretty-behaved if ever there were one,” she said with offence. “And I dare say she knew as how your father’d made his pile, and had an eye on it.”
“Oh no, oh no,” said Katherine with warmth and scorn. “Lady Mary is not like that, nor any of her people; they are generous and careless, and never calculate; they are not like your Kenilworths and Karsteins. She is a very thoroughbred woman, and to her novi homines are novi homines, however gilded may be their stucco pedestals.”
Happily the phrase was incomprehensible to her hearer, who merely replied obstinately: “Well, they tell me she’s ill spoke of, and I can’t have you mixed up with any as is; but if she was kind to you, my dear, and I mind me well you always wrote about her as being such, I’ll do anything to help her in reason. You know, my dear,” she added, lowering her voice, for the utterance was treasonable, “I have found out as how all them great folks are all hollow inside, as one may say. They live uncommon smart, and whisk about all the year round, but they’re all of ’em in Queer Street, living by their wits, as one may say; now I be bound your Lady Mary is so too, because she’s a duke’s daughter, and her husband came into the country with King Canute, him as washed his feet in the sea—at least the book says so—and anything she’d like done in the way of money I’d be delighted to do, since she was good to you——”
“Oh, my dear mother,” cried Katherine, half amused and half incensed, “pray put that sort of thing out of your mind altogether. Lady Mary has everything she wants, and if she had not she would die sooner than say so. And indeed they are quite rich. Not what my father would call so probably, but enough so for a county family which dates, as you rightly observe, from Knutt.”
Mrs. Massarene sighed heavily; she was bewildered but she was obstinate.
“Di’monds then?” she said tentatively. “None of them ever have enough di’monds. One might send her a standup thing for her head in di’monds—tira I think they call it; and say as how we are most grateful all of us, but you can’t be intimate because virtue’s more than rank.”
Katherine rose with strong effort controlling the deep anger and the irresistible laughter which moved her.
“We will talk of these things another time, dear,” she said after a moment. “Lady Mary will not be in London this season after Whitsuntide. Enid and May go out this year with their grandmother, Lady Chillingham.”
“That’s just what she said,” cried her mother in triumph. “She said Lady Mary couldn’t show her nose at Court even to present her own girls!”