"The inhuman old miser!" cried Miss Fox. "He shall never have two pence out of me. That settles it. Mr. Frank, try for Wednesday."
"Well, Frank, you puzzle me altogether," said Mrs. Gilham with some annoyance. "To think of your knowing all those things, and never telling your own mother!"
"I never talk of my neighbour's affairs, until they become my own business." Frank pulled up his collars, and Christie said to herself that his mind was very large. "But don't run away with the idea, mother, that I ever pry into such small matters. I know them by the merest accident. You know that the gamekeeper offers me a day or two when the woodcocks come in; and Batts detests old Binstock. But he is on the very best terms with Charles, and Bob, and Tamar Haddon. Through them I can manage it perhaps for Wednesday, if Miss Fox thinks fit to entrust me with the matter."
It happened that Lady Waldron held an important council with Mr. Webber, on the following Wednesday. She had long begun to feel the helplessness, and sad disadvantages of her position, as a foreigner who had never even tried to understand the Country in which she lived, or to make friends of any of the people round her. And this left her so much the more at the mercy of that dawdling old solicitor.
"Oh that I could only find my dear brother!" was the constant cry of her sorrow, and her wrath. "I wonder that he does not rush to help me. He would have done so long ago, if he had only known of this."
"No reply, no reply yet?" she asked, after listening, with patience that surprised herself, to the lawyer's long details of nothing, and excellent reasons for doing still less. "Are you certain that you have had my demand, my challenge, my supplication to my only brother entered in all the Spanish journals, the titles of which I supplied to you? And entered in places conspicuous?"
"In every one of them, madam, with instructions that all replies should be sent to the office of the paper, and then direct to you. Therefore you would receive them, and not our firm. Shall we try in any other country?"
"Yes, oh yes! That is very good indeed. I was thinking of that only yesterday. My brother has much love for Paris sometimes, whenever he is in good—in affluence, as your expression is. For I have not concealed from you, Mr. Webber, that although of the very first families of Spain, the Count is not always—through caprice of fortune, his resources are disposed to rise and fall. You should therefore try Paris, and Lyons, and Marseilles. It is not in my power to present the names of the principal journals. But they can be discovered, even in this country."
Mr. Webber was often hard put to it, by the lady's calm assumption that barbarism is the leading characteristic of an Englishman. For Theodore Webber was no time-server; only bound by his duty to the firm, and his sense of loyal service to a client of lofty memory. And he knew that he could take the lead of any English lady, because of her knowledge of his character, and the way in which he pronounced it. But with this Spanish lady, all his really solid manner, and true English style were thrown away.
"Even in this country, madam, we know the names of the less enlightened Journals of the Continent. They are hard to read because of the miserable paper they are printed on; but my younger son has the gift of languages, and nothing is too outlandish for him. That also shall be attended to. And now about this question that arises between yourself and Mr. Penniloe?"