“Oh, quite well, thank you. I persuaded him not to come down because he and father always get on so badly.”
“It’s a pity they do.”
“A very great pity. But I can’t help it. I did my best to persuade him to advance the money, but he’s not a man who’ll lend without good security, even to a relation. I’m sorry, because if he would stand by the family, I shouldn’t feel I’d been quite such a fool to marry him.”
Though the fiction of Mary being happily married was kept up only by Lady Alard, it gave Jenny a faint shock to hear her sister speak openly of failure. Her feelings of awkwardness and shyness returned, and a deep colour stained her cheeks. What should you say?—should you take any notice?... It was your sister.
“Mary, have you ... are you ... I mean, is it really quite hopeless?”
“Oh, quite,” said Mary.
“Then what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know—I haven’t thought.”
Jenny crossed and uncrossed her large feet—she looked at her sister’s little mules, motionless upon the fender.
“Is he—I mean, does he—treat you badly?”