“That brings us to Thursday. And the three times in Kensington Gardens. I have met him there, mother, by appointment. That’s seven times, isn’t it? No, eight—eight!” Her voice faded away as she said the number, as though she was lost in the wonder of it. Could it be possible? Only eight times—all told!
“Well. Well,” said Mrs. Verinder, pulling herself together. In the midst of her irritation she could not avoid a feeling of pride because of the silly child’s absolute truthfulness and candour. “Of course you understand that there must be no more of such meetings.”
Emmeline let that remark go, as if it had been a ball at tennis that was not worth moving to—so obviously out of court.
“And your father must be told about it.”
“Yes, I suppose he had better know,” said Emmeline dreamily.
Left alone, Mrs. Verinder polished off the flowers in a very rough and ready fashion, thinking the while. If Emmeline insisted on making an imprudent marriage, it was doubtful if one could prevent her. No, why not be honest about it? One couldn’t prevent her. The only way you can keep grown-up girls in check is by holding their purse-strings—and Emmeline had her own money. And she thought that, nice as it is to belong to the third or even fourth generation of families enriched by the highest form of trade, it is perhaps a pity that grandfathers should leave money to female grandchildren—absolutely, on their attaining the age of twenty-one. Wiser and better to leave it in the control of parents—or make the age thirty—or forty. Margaret had gone off so easily and pleasantly with Lionel Pratt. A nice well-dressed rich young fellow, able to build quite a palace for his wife, and send flowers to his mother-in-law.
Leaving out maternal feeling altogether, she could not bear this idea of a quite attractive if rather reserved girl marrying an uncouth stranger—a man who had come from the ends of the earth and would probably want to go back there. Of course if it must be, it must be. “But, oh,” she said to herself with a sigh, “it is all too weird; for I don’t understand what she has seen in him to captivate her.”
She determined that she would talk to her husband about it directly after dinner, not before dinner. It was now half-past six o’clock; and, while giving her very last dabs to the flowers, she fancied that she heard the front door open and shut. Going out to the hall presently and seeing one of the footmen, she inquired if it had been Mr. Verinder coming in.
“No, ma’am, it was Miss Verinder going out.”
“Oh, yes, quite so.”