“I will. She thought, Mr. Batchelor, she actually thought that our son, that my Cecilia’s husband, was smitten by the governess. I should like to have seen him dare!” and her flashing eyes turn towards the late Mrs. Lovel’s portrait, with its faded simper leering over the harp. “The idea that any woman could succeed that angel indeed!”
“Indeed, I don’t envy her,” I said.
“You don’t mean, Batchelor, that my Frederick would not make any woman happy?” cries the Bonnington. “He is only seven-and-thirty, very young for his age, and the most affectionate of creatures. I’m surprised, and it’s most cruel, and most unkind of you, to say that you don’t envy any woman that marries my boy!”
“My dear good Mrs. Bonnington, you quite misapprehend me,” I remark.
“Why, when his late wife was alive,” goes on Mrs. B. sobbing, “you know with what admirable sweetness and gentleness he bore her—her—bad temper—excuse me, Lady Baker!”
“Oh, pray, abuse my departed angel!” cries the Baker; “say that your son should marry and forget her—say that those darlings should be made to forget their mother. She was a woman of birth, and a woman of breeding, and a woman of family, and the Bakers came in with the Conqueror, Mrs. Bonnington——”
“I think I heard of one in the court of Pharaoh,” I interposed.
“And to say that a Baker is not worthy of a Lovel is pretty news indeed! Do you hear that, Clarence?”
“Hear what, ma’am?” says Clarence, who enters at this juncture. “You’re speakin’ loud enough—though blesht if I hear two sh-shyllables.”