“Sure you’re a person of vast authority on matters of love and marriage, madam.”
“Questionless, my dear. Han’t I set the fashion for Calcutta in weddings for many a long day? A surprise-wedding lends a charming touch to an evening party.”
“But sure there have been no weddings here of late?”
“No weddings? Why, there’s been little but weddings. You forget that a whole parcel of widows have required to be furnished with spouses.”
“Sure you can’t mean that the widows of the gentlemen who perished last year——?”
“But I do mean it. I don’t desire to startle my Sylvia, but there’s some things she must know.”
“You’d have me understand that—that—Mrs Freyne——?”
“Precisely. Mrs Freyne is entered upon a second matrimonial experiment.”
“And the happy person favoured with the transfer of her affections?”
“Come, child, I can’t have you sarcastic. It don’t become a young woman of my Sylvia’s charming disposition. The favoured suitor, my dear, is Captain Bentinck, who got his company through the entreaties of the Presidency when he was left to undertake the defence of Calcutta on Colonel Clive’s going to the war.”