“Ay,” she said, looking up at him. “You are his son; too much his son, I fear. 'Tis why he dislikes you so intensely. He sees in you the faults to which he is blind in himself.”
“Sweet mother!” said his lordship, bowing.
She scowled at him. She could deal in irony herself—and loved to—but she detested to have it dealt to her.
He bowed again; gained the door, and would have passed out but that she detained him.
“'Tis a pity, on some scores, to dispose so utterly of this Caryll,” she said. “The pestilent coxcomb has his uses, and his uses, like adversity's, are sweet.”
He paused to question her with his eyes.
“He might have made a husband for Hortensia, and rid me of the company of that white-faced changeling.”
“Might he so?” quoth the viscount, face and voice, expressionless.
“They were made for each other,” her ladyship opined.
“Were they so?”