The young man glanced at her inquiringly.
“Jilian is thirty-five if she is a day. She pads her figure and dyes her hair. You must be careful, lad. The wench has angled these twenty years. I can make a better match for you than that.”
Richard had grown accustomed to the Lady Letitia’s blunt methods of attack. He crossed one leg over the other, and strove to appear at his ease under the old lady’s critical gaze. The dowager was forever hinting at the undesirable nature of an alliance with the Hardacre family. They had birth, certainly, but what were a baronet’s blazonings in aristocratic England? Sir Peter was as poor as a parson; his estates were mortgaged to the last tree. Miss Jilian had been in the market for years, and would bring nothing in the shape of a dowry. The Lady Letitia dilated materially on all these points, as though she were advising her nephew on the purchase of a mansion.
“You are very kind, Aunt Letitia,” said the young man, somewhat sullenly, at the end thereof, “but I believe I am capable of choosing myself a wife.”
The old lady’s eyes glittered.
“So you are going to marry Jilian Hardacre, eh?”
“I did not say so.”
“Pooh, boy! haven’t I eyes in my head? So she has caught you, has she, the minx? Yet I must confess, nephew, that you do not seem ravished at the thought of embracing such a bride.”
Richard drew his knees up and fidgeted in his chair.
“Nothing of a serious nature has passed between us,” he said, awkwardly.