“Of all people on earth--_you!_” I replied reproachfully. “Why think of it--a husband who is the dream of docile propriety, a competency broadening each year into a fortune, a home like this, such servants, such appointments, such a circle of admiring friends--and then your daughters! Why, to be the mother of such a girl as Ermyntrude-------”
“Precisely,” interrupted Mrs Albert. “To be the mother of such a girl, as you say. Little you know what it really means! But, no--I know what you were going to say--_please_ don’t! it is too sad a subject.”
I could do nothing but feebly strive to look my surprise. To think of sadness connected with tall, handsome, good-hearted Ermie, was impossible.
“You think I am exaggerating, I know,” Mrs Albert went on. “Ah, you do not know!”
“Nothing could be more evident,” I replied, “than that I don’t know. I can’t even imagine what on earth you are driving at.”
Mrs Albert paused for a moment, and pushed the toe of her wee slipper meditatively back and forth on the figure of the carpet.
“Yes, I _will_ tell you,” she said at last. “You are such an old friend of the family that you are almost one of us. And besides, you are always sympathetic--so different from Dudley. Well, the point is this. You know the young man--Sir Watkyn’s son--Mr Eustace Hump.”
“Well, I doubt if you will meet him here any more,” Mrs Albert said, impressively.
“The deprivation shall not drive me to despair or drink,” I assured her. “I will watch over myself.”
“I dare say you did not care much for him,” said Mrs Albert. “I know Dudley didn’t. But, all the same, he _was_ eligible. He is an only son, and his father is a Baronet--an hereditary title--and they are _rolling_ in wealth. And Eustace himself, when you get to know him, has some very admirable qualities. You know he _writes!_”
“I have heard him say so,” I responded, perhaps not over graciously.
“O, _regularly_, for a number of weekly papers. It is understood that quite frequently he gets paid--not of course that that matters to him--but his associations are distinctly literary. I have always felt that with his tastes and connections his wife--granting of course that she was the right kind of woman--might at last set up a real literary _salon_ in London. We have wanted one so long, you know.”