“I am sure he is a most respectable member of society,” said Mr Durant, with much gravity.
“So are many asses. I have some one else to present to you, who is very unlike Mannering, but who betrays me still more distinctly. Constance, I want you here.”
The old clergyman gazed, not believing his eyes, as there suddenly appeared in the doorway the tall figure of a girl who had never been seen as yet in Bordighera--a girl who was very simply dressed, yet who had an air which the old gentleman, acquainted, as he flattered himself, with the air of fine people, could not ignore. She stood with a careless grace, returning slightly, not without a little of that impertinence of a fine lady which is so impressive to the crowd, his salutation. “Did you want me, papa?” she quietly asked.
The revelation which thus burst upon Mr Durant was known throughout the length and breadth of Bordighera, as that good man said, before the day was out. The expression was not so inappropriate as might be at first supposed, considering the limited society to which the fact that Mr Waring had a second daughter was of any particular interest; for the good chaplain’s own residence was almost at the extremity of the Marina, and General Gaunt’s on the highest point of elevation among the olive gardens; while the only other English inhabitants were in the hotels near the beach, and consisted of a landlady, a housekeeper, and the highly respectable person who had charge of the stables at the Bellevue. This little inferior world was respectfully interested but not excited by the new arrival.
But to Mrs Durant and Tasie it was an event of the first importance; and Mrs Gaunt was at first disposed to believe that it was a revelation of further wickedness, and that there was no telling where these discoveries might end. “We shall be hearing that he has a son next,” she said. They had a meeting in the afternoon to talk it over; and it really did appear at first that the new disclosure enhanced the enormity of the first--for, naturally, the difference between a widower and a married man is aggravated by the discovery that the deceiver pretending to have only one child has really “a family.” At the first glance the ladies were all impressed by this; though afterwards, when they began to think of it, they were obliged to admit that the conclusion perhaps was not very well founded. And when it turned out that Frances and the new-comer were twins, that altogether altered the question, and left them, though they were by no means satisfied, without anything further to say.
