A person of very moderate abilities can be spiteful; and Mrs. Ready was so censorious, and said when offended such bitter things, that her neighbours tolerated her impertinence out of a weak fear, lest they might become the victims of her slanderous tongue.
Though living in the same house with her husband, whose third wife she was, they had long been separated, only meeting at their joyless meals. Mrs. Ready considered her husband a very stupid animal, and did not fail to make both him and her friends acquainted with her opinion.
“There is a fate in these things,” she observed, “or you would never see a person of my superior intellect united to a creature like that.”
The world recognised a less important agency in the ill-starred union. Mrs. Ready was poor, and had already numbered thirty years, when she accepted the hand of her wealthy and despised partner.
No wonder that Flora, who almost adored her husband, and was a woman of simple habits and pretensions, should dislike Mrs. Ready: it would have been strange indeed if persons so differently constituted, could have met without antagonism.
Mrs. Ready’s harsh unfeminine voice and manners; her assumption of learning and superiority, without any real title to either, were very offensive to a proud sensitive mind, which rejected with disdain the patronage of such a woman. Flora had too much self-respect, not to say vanity, to tolerate the insolence of Mrs. Ready. She had met all her advances towards a closer intimacy with marked coldness; which, instead of repelling, seemed only to provoke a repetition of the vulgar, forcing familiarity, from which she intuitively shrank.
“Mrs. Lyndsay,” she was wont to say, when that lady was absent, “is a young person of some literary taste, and with the advice and assistance of a friend (herself of course) she may one day become an accomplished woman.”
Lyndsay was highly amused at the league, offensive and defensive, carried on by his wife and Mrs. Ready, who was the only blue stocking in the place; and he was wont to call her Flora’s Mrs. Grundy.
But Mrs. Grundy is already in the room, and Flora has risen to meet her, and proffer the usual meaningless salutations of the day. To these her visitor returns no answer, overwhelmed as she is with astonishment and grief.
“Mrs. Lyndsay!” she exclaimed, sinking into the easy chair placed for her accommodation, and lifting up her hands in a tragic ecstasy—“Is it true—true, that you are going to leave us? I cannot believe it; it is so absurd—so ridiculous—the idea of your going to Canada. Do tell me that I am misinformed; that it is one of old Kitson’s idle pieces of gossip; for really I have not been well since I heard it.