“Yes?” Mrs. Tancred had laid down the cardigan upon which she had just engaged, and her gimlet eyes were looking over, not through, her large spectacles in that manner which made erring kitchen-maids, drunken husbands, and even Edward himself, call on the mountains to fall on them.
“She—she is a very lovely creature!”
“But you did not break through my rule to tell me that?”
“Oh no, of course not; of course not.”
“What, then?”
“I did not catch her name at first.”
“Her name is Ransome”—articulated very distinctly—“that is, her surname; her Christian name is Bonnybell, an extremely silly one, but she is not responsible for it.” There was a feeling in the air as of putting armour on. “She is the daughter of that—that”—an adjective at once presentable and applicable seemed hard to find—“that very notorious Lady Ransome who died this year.”
“She is the daughter of that infamous woman! What first surprised me about her was that she seemed so intimate with Lady Tennington, who happened to be calling at the same time.”
“That is a fact which I should not have been able to verify.” Here Mrs. Tancred undoubtedly scored, strong in her immovable resolve to have no “truck” with the good-natured but completely unvirtuous Flora. Yet even this weapon might be turned against her.
Mrs. Aylmer, like her daughter, was growing rosy. There was no drop of vitriol or even gall in her whole composition, but when a stone had been thrown at her, would she be human if she did not return it?