‘I am sorry your leave was stopped,’ said his companion; ‘I would have given you more if I had been in command.’
‘You can’t eat your cake and have it, ma’am--and I enjoyed my cake.’
‘I suppose you never saw her again,’ said she.
‘Never; but I heard of her--she was guillotined in the Revolution a dozen years later. I shall never forget my feelings when I read it. She made a brave business of it, I was told; but no one could look at her and mistake about that.’
They sat silent for some time, and, Mrs. Somerville appropriating Barclay, Cecilia had leisure to turn to Miss Hersey; both she and Lady Eliza had a regard for the old ladies, though between them there was little in common save good breeding. But that can be a strong bond.
‘Come, come; we cannot allow you to monopolize Miss Raeburn any more!’ exclaimed Mrs. Somerville, tapping the lawyer playfully on the arm. ‘We need you at the tea-table; duty first and pleasure after, you know.’
‘If you will watch my destination, Mrs. Somerville, you will see that it is purely duty which animates me,’ said Barclay, starting off with a cup of tea in one hand and a plate of sweet biscuits in the other.
His hostess watched him as he offered the tea with much action to Miss Caroline Robertson.
‘Fie, sir! fie!’ she exclaimed, as he returned; ‘that is too bad!’
‘For my part, I would shut up all members of your sex after forty,’ said he, rather recklessly.
‘Indeed?’ said Mrs. Somerville, struggling with her smile. She was forty-seven.
‘I meant sixty, ma’am--sixty, of course,’ gasped Barclay, with incredible maladroitness.
‘That would be very sad for some of our friends,’ she observed, recovering stoutly from the double blow and looking with great presence of mind at Lady Eliza. ‘How old would you take her ladyship to be, for instance?’
Barclay happened to know that Lady Eliza would, if she lived, keep her fifty-third birthday in a few months; it was a fact of which some previous legal business had made him aware.
‘I should place her at forty-eight,’ he replied, ‘though, of course, if she understood the art of dress as you do, she might look nearly as young as yourself.’
‘Go away; you are too foolish, Barclay! Mr. Turner, we are talking of age: at what age do gentlemen learn wisdom?’