Edith broke bread that morning, but made little more than
a formal meal. Mrs. Hanbury would of course call. When? And what would she be like? The son had been much too condescending and familiar for one in his position. Would his mother make up in stateliness what he left aside? She would drive up between three and five with powdered footmen. The arrival of the carriage, and the footmen, and Mrs. Hanbury, mother of the well-known Mr. Hanbury, would be an event in Grimsby Street. Her old resolution of not knowing rich people must be waived in this case. There was no remedy for it; for he had said his mother would come.
Neither grandmother nor grand-daughter was in humour for talk. Edith was occupied with her own thoughts. They had nothing to do that day, for Edith had made up her mind to do nothing about a new situation until Monday. It being now Saturday, there was no time to take any steps that week.
They had not sat down to breakfast until half-past nine, and by ten they had not finished. As the little clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour the landlady's daughter entered to say a lady was below who desired to see Mrs. and Miss Grace.
Both rose. Whom could it be?
Mrs. Hanbury.
"I have taken the liberty of coming up without permission," said a voice at the door, and a tall, stately lady, with white hair and dressed in black, appeared at the threshold of the door left open by the attendant.
Mrs. Grace invited her to enter and be seated.
"I need not introduce myself further," the visitor said with a smile, as she sat down, after shaking hands with the two, "than to say I am the mother of Mr. Hanbury, who had the pleasure of calling upon you yesterday evening. I am afraid my visit this morning is as inconveniently early as his last night was late. But the discovery of the relationship between us is so extraordinary, and so pleasant to me, that I could not deny myself the happiness of calling at the very earliest moment I could get away. You have not even finished breakfast. I fear you will find it hard to forgive me." Her words, and smile, and manner were so friendly and unassuming, that grandmother and grand-daughter felt at ease immediately.
Mrs. Grace said that if the visitor would forgive the disorder of the table, they should have no reason to feel anything but extremely grateful to Mrs. Hanbury for coming so soon.
Mrs. Hanbury bowed and said, "I saw my son on his return from Derbyshire yesterday and when he came back from you last night. But he had not come down when I was leaving home just now. I am a very positive, self-willed old woman, and I have to ask you as a favour to make allowances for these infirmities. I have made up my mind that the best thing for us to do is to hold a little family council, and I have grown so used to my own room I never can feel equal to discussing family matters anywhere else. I have therefore come to ask you a favour to begin with. Do humour me, please, and come with me to my place. John will be down and done breakfast by the time we get there, and we four can talk over all this wonderful story at our leisure."
There were objections and demurs to this, but Mrs. Hanbury's insistent, good-humoured determination prevailed, and the end was that the three ladies set out together on foot for Chester Square. "And now," said Mrs. Hanbury, as they walked along, "that I have tasted the delights of conquest, I mean to turn from a mild and seemingly reasonable supplicant into a rigid tyrant. Back into that dreadful Grimsby Street neither of you shall ever go again. It is quite enough to destroy one's zest for life merely to look down it!"
The protests and demurs were more vehement than before.
"We shall not argue the point now. In my capacity of tyrant, I decline to argue anything. But we shall see-we shall see."
When they reached Mrs. Hanbury's, they went straight, to her own room. She left word that she was most particularly engaged, and could see no one. On enquiring for her son, she heard with surprise that he had come down shortly after she left and gone out without leaving any message for her.
That morning John Hanbury awoke to the most unpleasant thoughts about Dora. What ought he to do in the matter? Had he not acted badly to her in not writing the next morning after the scene in the drawing-room? the very night?
Unquestionably it would have been much better if he had written at once. But then at the time he reached home, he was in no state of mind to write to any one, and when he read his father's letter, the contents of it drove all other matters into the background, and made it seem that they could easily wait. Now he had been to Derbyshire, and knew all that was to be learned at Castleton, and had seen Mrs. Grace and Miss Grace and told them of the discovery he had made. His mother had undertaken to go see them, and for the present
there was nothing to press in front of his thought of Dora.
He had behaved very badly indeed to her. At the interview he had acted more like a lunatic brute than a sane gentleman, and afterwards his conduct had been-yes, cowardly. Curse it! was he always to behave like a coward in her eyes? She had reproached him with cowardice the other day, and he fully deserved her reproach. That is, he fully deserved the reproach of an impartial and passionless judge. But was the attitude of an impartial and passionless judge exactly the one a man expected from his sweetheart? Surely the ways of life would be very dusty and dreary if a man found his severest critics always closest to his side, if any deficiencies in the public indictment of his character or conduct were to be supplied by a voice from his own hearth, by his other self, by his wife?