Not one word, mark you, spoken of Saturday Davenant--that "Roag in Grane" and the professor as respectful as if his lordship had sat through thirty years of deliberation in the Upper House, and Mr. Goslett humbly deferential to her ladyship, and in secret confidential and familiar, even rollicking, with my lord, and Miss Kennedy respectfully thoughtful for their welfare.
This serenity was troubled and dissipated by the arrival of a letter addressed to Lady Davenant.
She received it--a simple letter on ordinary notepaper--with surprise, and opened it with some suspicion. Her experience of letters was not of late happy, inasmuch as her recent correspondence had been chiefly with American friends, who reminded her how they had all along told her that it was no good expecting that the Davenant claim would be listened to, and now she saw for herself, and had better come home again and live among the plain folk of Canaan, and praise the Lord for making her husband an American citizen; with much more to the same effect, and cruel words from nephew Nathaniel, who had no ambition, and would have sold his heirship to the coronet for a few dollars.
She looked first at the signature, and turned pale, for it was from the mysterious young lady, almost divine in the eyes of Stepney, because she was so rich, Miss Messenger.
"Lord!" cried Mrs. Bormalack. "Do read it quick."
Her ladyship read it through very slowly, much too slowly for her landlady's impatience.
Her pale cheeks flushed with pride and joy when she comprehended what the letter meant; she drew herself up straight, and her shoulders became so sloping that the uneasy feeling about her clothes, already alluded to, once more passed through Mrs. Bormalack's sympathetic mind.
"It will be a change, indeed, for us," she murmured, looking at her husband.
"What change?" asked his lordship. "Clara Martha, I do not want any change; I am comfortable here. I am treated with respect, the place is quiet; I do not want to change."
He was a heavy man and lethargic--change meant some kind of physical activity--he disliked movement.
His wife tossed her head with impatience.
"Oh," she cried, "he would rather sit in his armchair than walk even across the green to get his coronet. Shame upon him! Oh! Carpenter! Shh!"