“Mrs. Mavering I've never seen.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Pasmer, with a disappointment for which Munt tried to console her.
“I've never even been at their place. He asked me once a great while ago; but you know how those things are. I've heard that she used to be very pretty and very gay. They went about a great deal, to Saratoga and Cape May and such places—rather out of our beat.”
“And now?”
“And now she's been an invalid for a great many years. Bedridden, I believe. Paralysis, I think.”
“Yes; Mrs. Saintsbury said something of the kind.”
“Well,” said Munt, anxious to add to the store of knowledge which this remark let him understand he had not materially increased, “I think Mrs. Mavering was the origin of the wall-paper—or her money. Mavering was poor; her father had started it, and Mavering turned in his talent.”
“How very interesting! And is that the reason—its being ancestral—that Mr. Mavering wishes his son to go into it?”
“Is he going into it?” asked Munt.
“He's come up here to think about it.”