“That’s right,” nodded Mrs Floore, shifting the position of the stool a trifle with one red-heeled and buckled shoe. “Now let me take a look at this precious Marquis I’ve heard so much about!”
Lady Laleham, with an unconvincing smile pinned to her mouth, murmured to Rotherham: “Dear Mama is quite an eccentric!”
“I’m not an eccentric, and I’m not deaf!” said her dear Mama sharply. “I’m a plain woman that came of good merchant stock, which, though I may not have your fine-lady airs and graces, my dear, I’ve got more sense than to be ashamed of! And another thing I’ll tell you is that you’d do better to introduce this Marquis to me than to stand there biting your lips, and wondering what he must be thinking of your ma! He can think what he likes, and if Emma means to marry him—which, however, isn’t by any means a settled thing!—the sooner he gets used to her grandma the better it will be for him!”
“How do you do?” said Rotherham, slightly bowing, his tone indifferent, but his eyes keenly surveying this amazing old lady.
She gave him back stare for stare, taking him in from the heels of his boots to the crown of his black locks. “Good gracious, you’re a regular blackamoor!” she exclaimed. “Well, they say handsome is as handsome does, but from all I can make out, my lord, you haven’t done very handsome yet.”
“You must not mind Mama: she is so droll!” said Lady Laleham.
“It’ll be more to the point if I don’t mind him,” observed Mrs Floore, who was clearly in a belligerent mood. “You must excuse me staring at you, my lord, but I never did see such peculiar eyebrows! Now, I shouldn’t wonder at it, Emma, my pet, if half the time you thought he was scowling at you it was nothing but the way his eyebrows grow, which he can’t help, though, of course, it’s a pity.”
Rotherham kept his countenance set in its forbidding lines. At any other moment, he would have exerted himself to please Mrs Floore, for he was strongly attracted to her; but since her attitude appeared to be hostile he saw in her his one hope of salvation, and began to consider how best to annoy her.
“Dear Mama,—you know that Emily wished to see Lord Rotherham in private!” said Lady Laleham. “Don’t you think, perhaps—”
“No, I don’t,” replied Mrs Floore bluntly. “What’s more, it wasn’t Emma that wanted to be private with him, and if she had done, I don’t see much privacy for her with you standing over her, Sukey!”
“You forget, Mama, that I am her mother.”
“Well, and if I do, whose fault is that?” demanded Mrs Floore. “You act motherly, and maybe I won’t forget! From the look on poor little Emma’s face, you’ve been bullying her, the pair of you. That’s right, Ned, you give her a chair, and don’t you be afraid, my pet, because you haven’t any need to be!”
“None at all!” said Lady Laleham. “Lord Rotherham has been most forbearing, just as I knew he would be, and has not uttered one word of censure, has he, Emily?”
“No, Mama,” said Emily, in a small, scared voice.
“It’s to be hoped he hasn’t!” said Mrs Floore, her eyes snapping. That’s not to say he won’t hear a word of censure from me—in fact, a good many words! Yes, it’s all very well to be high in the instep, my lord, and to look at me as though I was a spider, and very likely you’re thinking I’m just a vulgar old woman, but what I say is that if anyone’s to blame for what’s happened it’s you!”
“I’ve no objection to vulgarity,” replied Rotherham. “What, however, I do not tolerate is interference. That had better be understood immediately.”
Mrs Floore seemed to swell. “Ho! So when I tell you I won’t have my granddaughter made miserable, that’s interference, is it?”
“If Emily is made miserable by me, the remedy is in her own hands.”
“Mama, pray be quiet!” cried Lady Laleham. “Such nonsense! As though she has not every reason to be the happiest girl alive!”
“You may toad-eat his lordship as much as you like, Sukey, but don’t you run away with the idea you can tell me to be quiet, or you and me will fall out, which would not suit your book! Ever since Emma got herself engaged to this Marquis, she’s looked downright seedy, and she’s been no more her merry self—”
“My dear Mama, I have told you a score of times that London, and all the gaieties she enjoyed, were too much for her!”
“Then there is no need for you to feel any further anxiety about her health,” said Rotherham. “We are not going to live in London.”
This pronouncement, uttered as it was in a curt, matter-of-fact voice, surprised Emily into uplifting her voice: “Not going to live in London?” she repeated.
“No.”
“Dear child, Lord Rotherham means that you will mostly be at Delford, or at Claycross!” interposed Lady Laleham. “Naturally, you will be in London for a few months during the spring!”
“I mean nothing of the sort,” said Rotherham, without heat, but with finality. “I am closing Rotherham House.”
“Closing Rotherham House?” exclaimed Lady Laleham, as though she could not believe her ears. “But—but why?”
He shrugged. “I dislike living in town, and abominate ton parties.”
Emily’s eyes darkened in dismay. “N-no parties at all?” she asked.
He glanced down at her. “We shall entertain at Delford, of course.”
“Oh, no!” she said involuntarily. “I—I couldn’t!” She flushed, and added pleadingly: “I would rather live in London! At least, some part of the year! Delford is so very big, and—and—I don’t like it!”
“I am afraid, since it is my home, you will have to overcome your dislike of it.”
“Of course she will!” said Lady Laleham. “But surely you cannot mean to keep her there throughout the year!”
“Why not?”
“I’ll soon tell you why not!” interrupted Mrs Floore, who had been listening in gathering wrath. “If Delford is the place where poor little Emma had to walk half a mile from her bedroom to the dining-room, it isn’t the kind of house that’ll suit her at all! Besides, from what she tells me, it’s stuck right out in the country, and she’s had enough of that kind of thing at Cherrifield Place! What’s she going to do with herself all day long?”
“She will find plenty to do, I imagine. She will have first to learn what is expected of Lady Rotherham, which is likely to keep her pretty fully occupied for some months. She will hunt, of course—”
“Hunt?” cried Emily. “Oh, no, please! I never do so!”
“You will,” he said.
“J-jump over those dreadful fences you showed me?” Emily said, horror in her voice. “I couldn’t!”
“We shall see!”
“Well, if ever I heard anything to equal it!” gasped Mrs Floore. “First, she’s to learn a lot of lessons, and next she’s to be made to break her neck!”
“Oh, she won’t break her neck!” said Rotherham. “A few tumbles won’t hurt her! I shall have some fairly easy jumps put up, and school her over them.”
“No!” almost shrieked Emily. “I won’t, I won’t!”
“No more you shall, lovey!” hotly declared Mrs Floore.
“It will be as well, Emily, if you realize that when you are Lady Rotherham I shall expect obedience from you. I warn you, it will not do if you say “I won’t” to me.”
Mr Goring, who had been seated rather in the background, got up, and said in his level tone: “We’ve heard a great deal of what you expect, and what you like, my lord, but we haven’t yet heard you ask Miss Laleham what she would like!”
“She’ll learn to like what I like—if she’s wise! I did not choose a bride out of the schoolroom, sir, to have her setting up her will against mine!”