The Lady Letitia was yawning over the love affairs of Sophia Weston when her nephew joined her in the drawing-room. She roused herself, sat up stiffly in her chair, and held up her fan to keep the heat of the fire from her painted face. The dowager regarded Richard with the solemnity of a witch of Endor. Jeffray had learned to dread these nightly interviews. Aunt Letitia was forever flinging her sarcasms at his head, and being a sensitive and easy-tempered youth he had never presumed to flout her in her pedagogic utterances.
It was evident to Richard that the dowager had been meditating as usual over his youthful eccentricities. She looked more pompous and austere than usual, like some hoary catechist ready to hear the callow creed of youth. The wind was moaning over the great house, tossing the sombre boughs of the cedars that towered above the lawns. The windows rattled; every chimney was full of sound. Jeffray flung more wood upon the fire, and sat down opposite his aunt with a look of melancholy resignation on his face.
“Richard,” said the old lady, suddenly, tilting her red beak and fixing her eyes upon her nephew.
Jeffray roused himself as from a reverie.
“Often enough, Richard, to suggest the attraction to me.”
Jeffray turned and watched the fire. The light played upon his sallow face and melancholy eyes, his plain black coat, the white ruffles falling down upon the small and refined hands. There was an air of picturesqueness about him that even Aunt Letitia recognized, despite the fact that she preferred a mischievous dandy to a book-befogged scholar.
The young man glanced at her inquiringly.
“Jilian is thirty-five if she is a day. She pads her figure and dyes her hair. You must be careful, lad. The wench has angled these twenty years. I can make a better match for you than that.”
Richard had grown accustomed to the Lady Letitia’s blunt methods of attack. He crossed one leg over the other, and strove to appear at his ease under the old lady’s critical gaze. The dowager was forever hinting at the undesirable nature of an alliance with the Hardacre family. They had birth, certainly, but what were a baronet’s blazonings in aristocratic England? Sir Peter was as poor as a parson; his estates were mortgaged to the last tree. Miss Jilian had been in the market for years, and would bring nothing in the shape of a dowry. The Lady Letitia dilated materially on all these points, as though she were advising her nephew on the purchase of a mansion.