“Not yet. I mean to write to him to-day.”
“Who is Sir Simon Harness?” inquired Isabel.
“He was my father's particular friend and the trustee during my minority,” I explained.
“You had better ask him to come down here for a few days to make your wife's acquaintance,” suggested Mrs. de Winton.
“No, he sha'n't!” broke in the angel in pink. “I don't want to make his acquaintance. He's a mean, disagreeable old man. Trustees always are. I hate them!”
I thought this charmingly innocent and childlike, though, it must be confessed, she put more vehemence into her manner than the case warranted; but remembering the type of trustee on which she had built her opinion of the class, I could not resent her prejudice against my old friends. My step-mother took a less indulgent view of the sortie. Seeing me cast a smile of tender indulgence on the culprit, she looked at me very sternly.
“Do you mean to requite years of faithful kindness and interest in your concerns by such a gross breach of respect and common courtesy as not to invite Sir Simon Harness to your house on such an occasion as this?” she demanded.
“Isabel is mistress of her own house. I cannot insist upon her receiving any one against her will,” I replied; “but when I have explained to her what kind of man Sir Simon is, I think she will consent to make his acquaintance.”
Isabel peeped at me from behind the urn, and made a face indicative of anything but consent.
Luckily, my step-mother did not see the little by-play, and, taking her silence for acquiescence, she said, addressing me: