“Oh, you mistake me,” she cried with a bewitching gesture of irritation at herself for having so ill conveyed her meaning. “Though I dislike the idea of marriage—I have seen such unhappy marriages—yet I am quite incapable of accepting him from mercenary motives; he is far too fine a character.”
Then Miss Ransome pulled up rather abruptly, conscious of having struck a false note. (“I am on the wrong tack again. Toby has no more a fine character than I have.”) She took up her parable in another key.
“He will be very kind to me, and he can make excellent settlements. His father’s property must come to him, as it is entailed, and he can make ducks-and-drakes of the estate he inherited from his cousin. He told me yesterday that it could all be settled on me and the younger children.”
Was she quite on the right tack, even now? Did she hear a low gasp from Edward at the revelation of the delicate choice of topics discussed between Miss Ransome and her lover? Probably not, or she would not have added the rider which presently followed, uttered with nonchalant matter-of-factness.
“That is to say, if there are any younger children!”
CHAPTER XX
After all, Edward was better than his word, doing what he had at first wisely declined to do, “breaking” the news to Camilla, and receiving on his own devoted head the first rush, the deadliest Levin bolts of the thunderstorm of her wrath. The skirt of the deluge was quite enough for poor Miss Ransome. The interview opened with an amenity which gave the keynote.
“Had a scullery-maid in my service,” Mrs. Tancred said, framing each word with such slow care, as if she feared even one of her pearls of speech should be lost—“had a scullery-maid in my service conducted her courtship in the way you have, I should have made my housekeeper dismiss her at once without a character.”
No etiquette book or guide to polite conversation having provided a suitable reply to such an address, Miss Ransome took it in acquiescent silence, not attempting to put up the umbrella of any useless palliative against the hurricane.
“It would be a mockery to hope that any blessing could attend a marriage resulting from an acquaintance so disgracefully made and scandalously cultivated. It is a gratifying reflection for me that it is I who have brought such a calamity upon my friends! I pity them; I pity him, poor deluded fool, from the bottom of my heart.”