“Sophia!  Yes, to be sure, Sophia is very highly connected on her mother’s side.  I often say to my husband that I am a mere nobody compared with his first wife.  But Sophia is not proud.  Sophia would be kind to the lowest, Mrs. Brown.” (This praise was used with vaguest application.) “She has such a good heart!  Really, what she has done for me and my children—­”

A light broke in upon Mrs. Brown’s mind.  She heard nothing concerning Mrs. Rexford and her children.  She knew now, or felt sure she knew, why Miss Rexford had always seemed a little stiff when Trenholme was praised.  Her attitude towards him, it appeared, had always been that of mere “kindness.”  Now, up to this moment, Mrs. Brown, although not a designing woman, had entertained comfortable motherly hopes that Trenholme might ultimately espouse one of her daughters, and it had certainly advanced him somewhat in her favour that his early acquaintance with Miss Rexford was an undisputed fact; but in the light of what Mrs. Rexford had just said of her daughter’s good-heartedness all assumed a different aspect.  Mrs. Brown was in no way “highly connected,” belonging merely to the prosperous middle class, but, with the true colonial spirit that recognises only distance below, none above, she began to consider whether, in the future, her role should not be that of mere kindness also.  To do her justice, she did not decide the question just then.

The voice of her youngest daughter was heard laughing rather immoderately.  “Indeed, Mrs. Bennett,” she laughed, “we all heard him say it, and, unlike you, we believed our ears.  We’ll draw up a statement to that effect and sign our names, if that is necessary to assure you.”

Her mother, approaching, detected, as no one else did, a strain of hysterical excitement in her laughter, and bid her rise to come home, but she did not heed the summons.

“Yes, he did say it.  That handsome brother of his, to whom I lost my heart two weeks ago, does really—­well, to put it plainly, knock animals on the head, you know, and sell them in chops, and—­what do you call it, mamma?—­the sirloin and brisket.  ’How do you do, Mr. Trenholme?  I want some meat for dinner—­chops, I think.’  Oh, how I should love to go and buy chops!”

Sophia was kneeling over a pile of work, folding it.  She asked the boisterous girl for the cloth she had been sewing, and her voice was hard and impatient, as if she wished the talk at an end.

Mrs. Bennett arose and wrapped her cape about her thin shoulders, not without some air of majesty.  There was a bitter angry expression upon her delicate face.

“All that I wish to say in this matter is, that I never knew this before; others may have been in possession of these facts, but I was not.”

“If you had been, of course you would have honoured him the more for triumphing over difficulties,” answered the elder Miss Brown, with smooth sarcasm.