“Stella, I will _not_ be interrupted, when I am speaking to you for your own good. I don’t know a more provoking person, Lady Loring, than my daughter--on certain occasions. And yet I love her. I would go through fire and water for my beautiful child. Only last week I was at a wedding, and I thought of Stella. The church was crammed to the doors! A hundred at the wedding breakfast! The bride’s lace--there; no language can describe it. Ten bridesmaids, in blue and silver. Reminded me of the ten virgins. Only the proportion of foolish ones, this time, was certainly more than five. However, they looked well. The Archbishop proposed the health of the bride and bridegroom; so sweetly pathetic. Some of us cried. I thought of my daughter. Oh, if I could live to see Stella the central attraction, so to speak, of such a wedding as that. Only I would have twelve bridesmaids at least, and beat the blue and silver with green and gold. Trying to the complexion, you will say. But there are artificial improvements. At least, I am told so. What a house this would be--a broad hint, isn’t it, dear Lady Loring?--what a house for a wedding, with the drawing-room to assemble in and the picture gallery for the breakfast. I know the Archbishop. My darling, he shall marry you. Why _don’t_ you go into the next room? Ah, that constitutional indolence. If you only had my energy, as I used to say to your poor father. _Will_ you go? Yes, dear Lady Loring, I should like a glass of champagne, and another of those delicious chicken sandwiches. If you don’t go, Stella, I shall forget every consideration of propriety, and, big as you are, I shall push you out.”
Stella yielded to necessity. “Keep her quiet, if you can,” she whispered to Lady Loring, in the moment of silence that followed. Even Mrs. Eyrecourt was not able to talk while she was drinking champagne.
In the next room Stella found Romayne. He looked careworn and irritable, but brightened directly when she approached him.
“My mother has been speaking to you,” she said. “I am afraid--”
He stopped her there. “She _is_ your mother,” he interposed, kindly. “Don’t think that I am ungrateful enough to forget that.”
She took his arm, and looked at him with all her heart in her eyes. “Come into a quieter room,” she whispered.