“Your mother, who always believes everything that is said to her! Let there be an end to this folly at once, Geoff; go and get a cab.”
“Aunt Anna, there had better be no struggle between us--yet. What I ask is very simple--that they should see my mother.”
“Do you want to see his mother?” she said, suddenly turning upon the astonished girls. “You have made acquaintance with him, I can see; but mothers have sharp eyes, and his mother thinks every girl she sees is in love with her fascinating son. Can’t he see you at some other place? I warn you my sister will give you no pleasant reception if she finds you here.”
“Grace, Grace, let us go away,” cried Milly, rising to her feet, scarlet with shame; but Grace had other things to think of, and paid no attention to this assault.
“I don’t want to be harsh,” continued Miss Anna; “but if you are good girls it will be much better for you to go away at once. I don’t say you are not good girls, far from it. I don’t pretend to judge; but girls of your age should not be going about to strange houses without invitation, especially where there is a young man. It has a strange look--your people would not like it. I advise you as your friend to go away.”
Here Milly clasped Grace by the arm, and drew her back a little; perhaps some passing communication from Geoffrey’s eyes had made the younger sister the more keen-sighted of the two for once. Grace turned round a little, moved by her earnestness, and there was the usual consultation by looks between them; the result of which was that Grace’s pale countenance became also suffused with colour; but she held her ground, though her sister drew her back.
“I do not think, if you were kind,” she said, “that you would speak so to two girls like us. You would protect us rather from every evil thought. We came here because we have no friends, thinking that they must have been friends to whom papa went on his first day in England: thinking, perhaps, you were relations--somebody who would take a little interest in us. If it is not so, there can be no reason why we should stay.”
Geoffrey put out his hand with an eager gesture. “Till my mother comes,” he said.
“Young ladies,” cried Miss Anna, “I will tell you what that boy means; he wants to make you out to be the children of a sort of madman who was here some time ago--an impostor: a fellow who gave himself out as--who represented himself to be--a man who has been dead for years. Would you like to have a slur put upon your father, who appears to have been a respectable person?” she added more calmly. She had yielded to an impulse of anger, and had flushed passionately. But at the last words she calmed down, and spoke with distinct and slow utterance, with a slight curl of contempt about her mouth.