The Lady Letitia, still talking, subsided again into her chair. She looked very yellow and ugly despite her rouge, and she was short of breath, as Richard noticed. Age seemed to be gaining fast on her, and even a liberal remittance from her bankers could not keep her from growing feeble. Jeffray was astonished at the change that even two months had wrought in her. Her fierce, peering eyes were bright as ever, but he could see that her hands trembled, and that a senile tremor was shaking the feathers in her “head.”
“Sit down, nephew, sit down. And how does Miss Jilian like The Wells, sir? You ought to have brought her to see me, Richard.”
Jeffray had settled himself on a stool by the window. He was watching the gay stream of color in the walk below, one hand playing with the hilt of his sword.
“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.
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.
“Hum, Richard, mon cher, pardon me, but you look worried, troubled. Will you not confide in an old woman, eh? I have seen a great deal of the world.”
Jeffray, who had been leaning with one elbow on the window-sill, and drumming on the glass with his fingers, turned suddenly, looking vexed and half ashamed. He had still enough mock pride left in him to resent the steady conviction that his elderly relative had warned him very shrewdly. He had always half despised the worldly old Jezebel, but she seemed to have the laugh of him for the moment.