“Indeed, sir, indeed!”
“I was ordered here for my health by Surgeon Stott. It seems a gay place, madam. I have never before seen so many butterflies flitting about together.”
The Lady Letitia’s keen and angular face had taken on an expression of vivid alertness. Her birdlike eyes twinkled over her nephew’s face. Certainly he appeared more melancholy and self-centred than ever, and spoke listlessly, as though some trouble were weighing on his mind. The old lady’s insatiable curiosity was awake on the instant. It was her fate to be forever prying and peering into the affairs of others.
“I hope dear Jilian is well, Richard.”
“Not very well, aunt.”
“Eh, eh! What’s been the matter?”
“Miss Hardacre has had the small-pox.”
“The small-pox!”
“Yes.”
The old lady’s eyes glittered shrewdly. She sat with her hands on the crook of her stick, looking at Richard with penetration. There were cynical and amused wrinkles about her mouth. Jeffray’s melancholy, his air of abstraction, expressed infinite things to the Lady Letitia. She could have chuckled over the apparent fulfilment of her prophecies. Miss Jilian, doubtless, had had her complexion shattered, and Mr. Richard was feeling utterly out of love with her.