“Certainly,” replied Charlotte, “for she asked mamma and myself to call and introduce her, but we were engaged that morning, and she said it was no matter, she would leave her card and be introduced the first time they met.”
“I thought so!” said Mrs. Fortesque exultingly, “It’s just like her!”
“There’s no reason why she should not have called, Mrs. Fortesque,” said Emma.
But Mrs. Fortesque did not look assenting at this; she only said, however —
“Perhaps so. But I don’t like calling on these people for their parties—for it amounts to that, when you can’t return them.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Fortesque,” said Emma, “then only the rich would know the rich. And there are a great many charming people in society who cannot afford to entertain, and who the Elliots and others are delighted to have.”
“Oh, my dear,” returned the lady with much excitement of manner, “that’s all very well when you have happened to know them; but I would not go out of my way to make their acquaintance. There’s nobody of any consequence in society, or who entertains, that Mrs. Lyman does not make it a point of knowing. Now, her calling on the bride yesterday as one of Hamilton’s friends. Why, she knows Hamilton just as you and I and half the town do—a slight bowing acquaintance—but now he is marrying a rich fashionable girl, she finds out that it is incumbent on her as ‘one of his friends’ to call on his bride! So absurd! And she wont effect her object by this sort of thing either,” she added spitefully. “The young men are tired of seeing those two ugly girls of hers at every place they go.”
“Oh, Mrs. Fortesque!” said Emma expostulatingly, yet half laughing.
“Of course, my dear,” returned Mrs. Fortesque warmly. “Every body sees that, and she’ll fail.”
“Well, if that is the object—” said Emma.