Lady Lufton took it, and read it, and her face grew blacker and blacker. Her mind was set against the writer before she began it, and every word in it tended to make her feel more estranged from him. “Oh, he is going to the palace, is he—well; he must choose his own friends. Harold Smith one of his party! It’s a pity, my dear, he did not see Miss Proudie before he met you, he might have lived to be the bishop’s chaplain. Gatherum Castle! You don’t mean to tell me that he is going there? Then I tell you fairly, Fanny, that I have done with him.”
“Oh, Lady Lufton, don’t say that,” said Mrs. Robarts, with tears in her eyes.
“Mamma, mamma, don’t speak in that way,” said Lady Meredith.
“But my dear, what am I to say? I must speak in that way. You would not wish me to speak falsehoods, would you? A man must choose for himself, but he can’t live with two different sets of people; at least, not if I belong to one and the Duke of Omnium to the other. The bishop going indeed! If there be anything that I hate it is hypocrisy.”
“There is no hypocrisy in that, Lady Lufton.”
“But I say there is, Fanny. Very strange, indeed! ‘Put off his defence!’ Why should a man need any defence to his wife if he acts in a straightforward way. His own language condemns him: ‘Wrong to stand out!’ Now, will either of you tell me that Mr. Robarts would really have thought it wrong to refuse that invitation? I say that that is hypocrisy. There is no other word for it.”
By this time the poor wife, who had been in tears, was wiping them away and preparing for action. Lady Lufton’s extreme severity gave her courage. She knew that it behoved her to fight for her husband when he was thus attacked. Had Lady Lufton been moderate in her remarks Mrs. Robarts would not have had a word to say.
“My husband may have been ill-judged,” she said, “but he is no hypocrite.”
“Very well, my dear, I dare say you know better than I; but to me it looks extremely like hypocrisy: eh, Justinia?”
“Oh, mamma, do be moderate.”