“Seriously, though,” resumed Colonel Ormonde, “it’s all very well for Katherine to make a good match, and if De Burgh is fool enough to be in earnest, it will be a splendid match for her; but things may be made rather rough for me. That fellow De Burgh has the queerest crotchets, and doesn’t hesitate to air them. He’d think nothing of slapping my shoulder in the club before a dozen members, and asking me if I meant to leave my wife’s brats on his hands.”
“Do you really think so? Oh, Katherine would never let him. She dearly loves the boys.”
“Wait till she has a son of her own.”
“Even so. She has her faults, I know. Her temper is rather violent, her ideas are too high-flown and nonsensical, and she won’t take advice, but she never would injure me, I am sure of that.”
An inarticulate grunt from Colonel Ormonde, as he fixed his double glass on his nose and took up his pen again.
“Duke,” resumed Mrs. Ormonde, after a pause, “don’t you think I had better go and see Katherine? You know we never had any quarrel, and that Mrs. Needham she lives with gives very nice parties.”
“Parties! By Jove! you’d go to old Nick for a party. What good will it do you to meet a pack of beggarly scribblers?”
“They may not have money, Duke, but they have manners, and something to say for themselves,” she retorted. “Never mind about the parties. Don’t you think I would better call on Katherine?”
“Do as you like but consider that she has behaved very badly—with extreme insolence; but I don’t want to influence you.” This in a tone of magnanimity, as he began to write with an air of profound attention.
Mrs. Ormonde made a swift contemptuous grimace at his back, and said, in mellifluous tones: “Very well, dear. I may as well go at once, and perhaps she will come with me to that dressmaking ally of hers, Miss Trant. I hear she is raising her prices, but she will not do so to me if I am with her original patroness.”
“Oh, do as you like; only don’t send me in a long milliner’s bill.”
“I am sure, Duke, my clothes never cost you much.”
“Not so far, but the future looks rather blue.”
To this she made no reply. Leaving the room noiselessly, she retired to give a touch of kohl to her eyes, a dust of pearl powder to her cheeks, and then started on her mission of inquiry and reconciliation.
It is not to be denied that Katherine was greatly touched by De Burgh’s thoughtful kindness to her boys. She had been a good deal troubled about their holidays, for she did not like to take full advantage of Mrs. Needham’s kind permission to absent herself as much as she liked in order to be with them, and she well knew that in Miss Payne’s very orderly establishment the two restless, active little fellows would be a most discordant ingredient. Above all, she wanted them to have a very happy holiday, as she feared their cloudless sunny days were numbered.