“Oh, brag to me about your modest, self-sacrificing spinsters! Mighty agreeable and willing was Miss Elvira to go and be a tonic to Madame Hazel—and, incidentally, be handy for a rich mill owner to waste roses on! The pair of them! Didn’t know anything about it until she got to Lindale? You’re green enough for sheep to eat if you think she wasn’t planning it all ever since she heard of Hugh’s uncle. She knew he would be going to Lindale soon, and mighty easy it was for her and Hazel to cook up a plot to have her there when he came. ‘Oh, my, such a surprise to meet you here, Mr. Courtenay!’” Eulalie gave an imitation of Elvira’s imagined giggle. “She’s got to come straight home again—that’s what she has.”
“My stars, Laly,” besought Marion, “don’t beat up a tornado about it. What is it to you if Elvira does marry Hugh’s uncle, or anybody she sees fit?”
“She has no business—it’s absurd at her age.”
“Thirty-two isn’t decrepit.”
“It’s too old for such didoes. And she knows that Mr. Courtenay has vowed never to marry again, and that Hugh will inherit the mills if he doesn’t.”
“Oh, that’s the snag! But you are not engaged to Hugh, are you?”
“No, not yet.”
“Did Elvira know you had intentions that way?”
“She might have known I’d take him when I got ready if she kept her webs away from that old donkey of an uncle.”
“What mortal, do you presume to say, could divine which one of your ninety and nine misguided admirers you were going, when you get good and ready, to favor with the empty husk of your frivolous little heart? And if anyone could tell, what law or statute have you against Elvira’s equal right to the mills, provided she loves the miller?”