“So you are back at last, Richard,” she said, looking like a pompous old parrot, with one eye on her cards and one on her nephew. “Seat yourself, Dr. Sugg; Richard does not want you to stand on ceremony. Snowing, eh? Detestable weather; the country is like a quagmire already, as I may see by your coat and breeches, nephew. It is usual for a gentleman to dress before presenting himself to a lady. You look surprised, Richard. ‘Is it not my own house?’ you say. Certainly, mon cher, so it is, but I am a lady of birth, sir, and I like to be treated as such. How is Mistress Jilian? Deft at the harpsichord as ever?”
Richard, whose face had flushed towards the end of this oration, drew a chair beside the card-table, and seated himself before the fire. It was characteristic of the Lady Letitia that she had a habit of ruling and correcting every one. She would tilt her beak of a nose, fix her wicked little eyes on the victim, and drop gall and bitterness from her shrivelled old mouth with a condescension that made her detestable. There was an avaricious glint in the old lady’s eyes for the moment. Poor Dr. Sugg, purple-faced and stertorous, came nightly to the priory in clean ruffles and a well-powdered wig to permit the Lady Letitia to possess herself of his small cash in the hope that the worthy dowager might use her influence on his behalf with my lord the bishop.
Aunt Letitia turned suddenly and rapped her nephew’s shoulder with her fan.
“Richard,” she said, with some asperity, “is it customary to sit between a lady and the fire?”
Jeffray apologized and shifted his chair. Dr. Sugg was engaged in shuffling the cards; the dowager’s black eyes were busy scanning her nephew’s person with the critical keenness of a woman of the world.
“Richard, where did you get that coat?” she asked.
“Pooh! the rascal has made it like a sack. You must have a smart tailor, boy. I cannot allow you to be disgraced by your clothes.”
Dr. Sugg, who was glancing over his cards, cast a pathetic look at Richard, and groaned over his inveterate bad luck. Aunt Letitia’s eyes glistened; her rouged and scraggy face was radiant with miserly good humor.
“My dear Richard,” she said, benignantly, “I must really take you to The Wells with me, and introduce you into respectable society. You must learn elegance, dignity, address. These virtues are as necessary to a young man of good family as a good tailor or a smart hatter. You must have your hair dressed properly; I will instruct Gladden myself in the latest fashion. Bucolic melancholy does not pass for fine breeding in elegant circles.”