She didn't, in thinking it over, know at all how this had happened, and she generally knew precisely how these things happened.
Lady Staines told her son at breakfast a few mornings later what she thought of Miss Fanshawe.
"She's a girl," she observed, knocking the top off her egg, "who will develop into a nervous invalid or an advanced coquette, and it entirely depends upon how much admiration she gets which she does. I hear she's religious, too, in a silly, egotistical way. She ought to have her neck wrung."
Sir Peter disagreed; they heard him in the servants' hall.
"Certainly not!" he roared; "certainly not! I don't think so at all! The girl's a damned pretty piece, and the man's one of my best tenants. He's only just come, and he's done wonders to the place already. And I won't have the boy crabbed for fancying a neighbor! It's very natural he should. You never have a woman in the house fit to look at. Who the devil do you expect your boys to marry? Negresses or bar-maids?"
"Gentlewomen," said Lady Staines, firmly, "unless their father's behavior prevents them from being accepted."
Winn said nothing. He got up and began cutting ham at the sideboard. His mother hesitated a moment; but as she had only roused one of her men, she made a further effort in the direction of the other.
"The girl's a mean-spirited little liar," she observed. "I wouldn't take her as a housemaid."
"You may have to take her as a daughter-in-law, though," Winn remarked without turning round from the sideboard.