“No, I’m for three days at Chanter with my mother; whom, as she kindly lent me her car, I should have rather liked to bring.”
Lady Sandgate left the unsaid, in this connection, languish no longer than was decent. “But whom you doubtless had to leave, by her preference, just settling down to bridge.”
“Oh, to sit down would imply that my mother at some moment of the day gets up——!”
“Which the Duchess never does?”—Lady Sand-gate only asked to be allowed to show how she saw it. “She fights to the last, invincible; gathering in the spoils and only routing her friends?” She abounded genially in her privileged vision. “Ah yes—we know something of that!”
Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye, fixed her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in compassion. “You too then?”
She wouldn’t, however, too meanly narrow it down. “Well, in this house generally; where I’m so often made welcome, you see, and where——”
“Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out of you, perhaps you’ll let me say!”
She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel—and am proud to feel!—at being of comfort when they’re worried.”
This but fed the light flame of his easy perception—which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.”
Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber—who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I’ve had to, goodness knows!—has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’ even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.”