"You don't tell me," she said to Belinda, "that Frederic's wife will have been the friend of such a woman as that!" And Lady Aylmer, sitting up-stairs with her household books before her, put up her great fat hands and her great fat arms, and shook her head,--front and all,--in most satisfactory dismay.
"But I suppose Clara did not know it." Belinda had considered it to be an act of charity to call Miss Amedroz Clara since the family consent had been given.
"Didn't know it! They have been living in that sort of way that they must have been confidantes in everything. Besides, I always hold that a woman is responsible for her female friends."
"I think if she consents to drop her at once,--that is, absolutely to make a promise that she will never speak to her again,--Frederic ought to take that as sufficient. That is, of course, mamma, unless she has had anything to do with it herself."
"After this I don't know how I'm to trust her. I don't indeed. It seems to me that she has been so artful throughout. It has been a regular case of catching."
"I suppose, of course, that she has been anxious to marry Frederic;--but perhaps that was natural."
"Anxious;--look at her going there just when he had to meet his constituents. How young women can do such things passes me! And how it is that men don't see it all, when it's going on just under their noses, I can't understand. And then her getting my poor dear sister to speak to him when she was dying! I didn't think your aunt would have been so weak." It will be thus seen that there was entire confidence on this subject between Lady Aylmer and her daughter.
We know what were the steps taken with reference to the discovery, and how the family were waiting for Clara's reply. Lady Aylmer, though in her words she attributed so much mean cunning to Miss Amedroz, still was disposed to believe that that lady would show rather a high spirit on this occasion; and trusted to that high spirit as the means for making the breach which she still hoped to accomplish. It had been intended,--or rather desired,--that Captain Aylmer's letter should have been much sharper and authoritative than he had really made it; but the mother could not write the letter herself, and had felt that to write in her own name would not have served to create anger on Clara's part against her betrothed. But she had quite succeeded in inspiring her son with a feeling of horror against the iniquity of the Askertons. He was prepared to be indignantly moral; and perhaps,--perhaps,--the misguided Clara might be silly enough to say a word for her lost friend! Such being the present position of affairs, there was certainly ground for hope.