“And it is,” persisted Mrs. Fortesque decidedly.
“I don’t agree with you in thinking she’ll fail,” continued Emma, without noticing the interruption. “I think the Lymans are nice girls and generally liked.”
“No beauties, you’ll admit,” said Mrs. Fortesque, scornfully.
“No, not beauties,” replied Emma, “but they get on quite as well as if they were. Besides, really Mrs. Fortesque, to do Mrs. Lyman justice, I never saw any thing about her like a match-making mother.”
“Oh, my dear!” ejaculated Mrs. Fortesque. “She is very anxious to marry them off. And well she may be. The other two are growing up as fast as they can. I only think she is taking the wrong course. And then such a labor as she makes of it! She’s somewhere every night.”
“Oh yes. Sometimes at two parties beside the opera,” said Charlotte. “There’s no pleasure in society at such a rate. They have an idea that it is tonish I believe.”
“Too absurd!” repeated Mrs. Fortesque, who had evidently not yet discharged all her wrath. But being obliged to make other calls she rose, and as Lady Teazle says, “left her character behind her,” for she was not fairly out of the room before Emma laughed and said —
“Poor Mrs. Fortesque! She cannot get over the Lymans getting on so well in society. To be sure they do push for it, but they get it. And their being at Elliot’s where she was not invited and does not visit, seems to have capped the climax of her vexation.”
“And to speak slightingly of Rawleys’ party,” said Charlotte. “That really was unkind in Mrs. Lyman, for she knows how much Mrs. Fortesque thinks of the Rawleys.”
“That was the reason of course,” replied Emma laughing. “She knows the Rawleys are Mrs. Fortesque’s grandees. For there’s no one that thinks so much of fine people as Mrs. Fortesque.”