“A fine companion indeed!” retorted his wife. “A wonderful lot of time she spends with Effie! I call it simply shameful the way she is going on! We bring her out with us at great cost to be a companion for Effie, and here she is from morning to night running after some new people, just because they are rich and well connected, and she hopes to catch the young man for a husband!”
Like many rather easy-going and phlegmatic people, Mrs. Cossart took a good deal of rousing, but when once an idea had thoroughly taken possession of her mind, there was no getting it out, and if it happened to be one of an irritating and disturbing kind, it would gradually work like leaven in her nature, and entirely overset her natural equilibrium. She had been brooding for weeks over the turn affairs seemed taking, but this was the first time she had spoken quite so openly to her husband, and Mr. Cossart was decidedly taken aback.
“Really, my dear, I don’t think such an idea has ever entered Sheila’s head. She is such a child still. She is fond of Miss Adene and these Dumaresqs, and they have taken a fancy to her; but I don’t think you need think such things of her. She is just as happy playing with the little boy as being with young Dumaresq; and it seems to me that he pays quite as much attention to Effie. I have taken care to let him know, in an indirect kind of way, that our little girl will have a pretty dower when she marries. And in these days young men think of such things. High time too, with the land depreciating as it is!”
“Yes, and perhaps if Sheila were not here something might come of it. Effie has twice the character of Sheila, but there is something about the way that little flirt goes on that takes the fancy of people in a way I can’t understand! And if you would believe it, on New Year’s Eve, when I thought Ronald Dumaresq was sitting out with Effie watching the fireworks and so on—if you would believe it he had just turned her over to his aunt, and off he set down the hill in a carro, and found Sheila out on the verandah here, and stayed with her all the time! What do you call that sort of thing, I wonder?”
“Well, my dear, I don’t see that Sheila was in fault. And there were other people out too. She was not alone. If young Dumaresq chose to come and watch the display from here, nobody could blame her.”
“I expect it was a got-up thing between them. She never said a word about it either; I only heard it incidentally a few days ago. She is a very artful young minx—that is what she is!”
Mr. Cossart was uncomfortable. He was a just man and a kindly one by nature; and Sheila’s pretty ways had taken his fancy as they had taken the fancy of others. He had no special matrimonial ambitions for his own daughter. He would very well have liked to see her the wife of Ronald Dumaresq; but, on the other hand, if the young man had other ideas for himself, he would never make a trouble of it.
“There’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,” was a favourite maxim of his, and if Sheila were to get a handsome husband in Ronald, her uncle would wish her joy and be ready to arrange matters for her in fatherly fashion. But he knew by experience that his wife, when once her mind was made up, was inexorable.
“Yes,” continued Mrs. Cossart wrathfully, “you men never see an inch before your noses, but I have had my misgivings ever since Sheila came. Look how things were with the girls and Cyril. I don’t mean that I think much of Cyril—he’s only a Cossart when all’s said and done. All his grand ways won’t make him a better man than his father before him, and of course they’re cousins. Still I had no particular objection, and Effie seemed to think more of him than of anybody else, and to be a good deal taken up with him. But as soon as Sheila came I noticed the difference. It was she who was the attraction then. They were always scheming to get together and ride off alone and all that sort of thing. There was talk about Effie, to be sure, and teaching her to ride; but that was just the excuse. Oh, I know what I am talking about! And now it is just the same thing again. If it were not for Sheila, young Dumaresq would be very attentive to Effie, but as things are he never gets the chance. That girl, with her craving after notice, her laughing ways and bold artful scheming, just winds him round her fingers, and the end of it will be, you’ll see, that she lands the fish, and Effie is left out in the cold!”
“But, my dear, if the young man prefers Sheila (and I’m not at all prepared to think he does; but she is pretty and taking, and he naturally talks to her) I don’t see that we could interfere.”