Mrs. Fairthorn sighed, for she had quick perception, and some good behind all her badness. “I fear that the little doll is too good for you,” she answered; and he smiled at her.
How they managed it, matters little; but they thought they had managed it rarely well. No doubt they told lies pat as puddings, and plentiful as blackberries. Tho Lord, who settles all things well—as we sometimes find out in the end—allowed them this little bit of triumph, to increase their discomfiture. But after all, I have no ill will, and am sorry that they had so much.
“How beautifully everything has gone off, Don!” said the lady, when she had settled her stately form in the watered silk again; “you see what a little tact can do. I put it as a favour to that poor thing. The objections have come from those wretched lawyers. The poor Earl would not hear a word about the money. I can’t think what I have been about, not to take the bull by the horns long ago. But the fault was yours. I could never trust you. Well, I was never more pleased in my life. It will be in the Morning Post to-morrow. Did you see how the poor Earl looked at me? I can wind him round my finger.”
“The Professor may go to the bottom with his trawl; and then who knows what might happen?” Donovan spoke with a bitter smile; he had never entirely forgiven his mother for her second marriage.
“Don’t be so shocking, Don. I am ashamed of you. Well, a month is not very long to wait; and there is a great deal to see to. Fizzy and Jerry will be bridesmaids, of course, and I must not be quite a dowdy. How that pest of a Dulcamara will ko-tow! She threatened me with the Queen’s Bench yesterday. I am not sure that I shall give her any order. I should like to break her heart, and I know how to do it. If I put the whole into Madame Fripré’s hands, Dulcamara would never look up again. But her cut is so inferior to Dulcamara’s. Well, I need not make my mind up, until to-morrow.”
“I think you had better keep the whole thing quiet, and pull it off without any fuss at all. The Earl hates pomps and vanities, so does Clara, and so do I. We had better have no humbug.”
“And be married at a registry office, I suppose. None of that mean, shabby work for me. Everything shall be left in my hands, and I’ll see that things are done properly. If it was only to vex your Aunt Arabella, after her trumpery rudeness to you, I should insist upon decency and comfort. I know how to cut her to the heart, and I intend to do it. The very day before the wedding, I shall write—‘Dearest Arabella,—We have been disappointed at the last moment by the dear Duchess of Coventry. Her Grace is afflicted with a bilious attack. Would you mind taking her place to-morrow, and excuse the brevity of this invitation?’ I should like to see her passionate face, when she gets that.”
“Don’t be a fool, mother. You know, after all, you and I are the proper heirs to her estates, though she can dispose of them as she likes. She dislikes us; but she is an upright woman. It would be mad to offend her fatally.”
“She has cheated me out of house and land. There is no primogeniture among women. I simply did the thing she was going to do. She has rolled in money, and let me roll in the dirt. None of her posthumous benevolence for me! You will never see me grovelling at that woman’s feet.”
At the rehearsal of her wrongs, her violent temper rose and swelled, as a dog’s wrath waxes with his own bark. She stood up in the carriage, and crushed her head dress. This doubled her fury, and she turned upon her son.