Lady Adela warmed into the expression of a more positive enthusiasm than she usually showed.
‘Min,’ she answered, ‘Gundred is absolutely the dearest of creatures. Everything that is nice. I really feel that I have quite found a daughter—thoroughly well brought up, and charming manners, and truly religious, which is such a great thing nowadays. Not at all forward or fashionable, but just a steady, old-fashioned, good girl. I am sure you will love her, Min.’
Mrs. Mimburn began, on the contrary, to conceive a strong dislike for the future Mrs. Darnley—a dislike tempered only by the hope that she might be found to have had a mystery in her life.
‘Quite a bread-and-butter miss,’ she tittered.
‘Do have some more, Min,’ pleaded Lady Adela, with apparent irrelevance, exercising her usual happy power of ignoring unfavourable comment. ‘Yes, nothing could be luckier in every way. She is the very wife I should have chosen for dear Kingston. She will make him perfectly happy. And now, Min, I do really feel that my work is finished. It has been a great responsibility, you know, having sole charge of a son all these years. There are so many dangers. Mercifully, he has always had confidence in me, and I have been able to keep him away from everything undesirable. But, of course, as time goes on, one gets to feel more and more anxious. You can say what you like, but it isn’t always easy to understand young men. Even a mother’s sympathy finds it difficult sometimes.’
Mrs. Mimburn had a very terse answer to the riddle of young-manhood. Human nature presented no mysteries to her mind; woman was the solution of them all. She sniffed knowingly.
‘I think I could manage it, La-la,’ she replied. ‘However, you are marrying off Kingston, and that is the great thing. I suppose he is very much in love?’
‘Oh, very, very, even before I suggested it. And she adores him, of course. I saw that long ago. But dear Kingston is so simple and good, he had no idea until I told him.’
‘And he proposed—when? Yesterday?’
‘After lunch, dear Min. I asked Gundred on purpose, and we had some really delightful Caviare biscuits. And then I managed to leave them in the drawing-room—and—and—it came off, dear Min. I am so pleased.’