Describing Impressions of a Momentous Interview, loosely gathered by One who, although present, was not quite In it

Mrs Albert has smiled upon my suit to be her son-in-law.

The smile did not, however, gush forth spontaneously at the outset. When the opportunity for imparting our great news came, we three were in the drawing-room, and Mrs Albert, who had just entered, had been allowed to discover me holding Ermyntrude’s passive hand in mine. She cast a swift little glance over us both, and seemed not to like what she saw. I was conscious of the impression on the instant that Ermyntrude did not particularly like it either. An effect of profound isolation, absurd enough, but depressingly real, suddenly encompassed me. I began talking something—the words coming out and scattering quite on their own incoherent account—and the gist of what they made me say sounded in my ears as if it were a determined enemy who was saying it Why should I be speaking of my age, and the fact that I had held Ermie on my knee as a child, and even of my rheumatism? And did I actually allude to them? or only hear the clamorous echoes of conscience in my guilty soul, the while my tongue was uttering other matters? I don’t know, and the fear that Ermie would admit that she really hadn’t been paying attention has restrained me from asking her since.

But Mrs Albert was paying attention. She held me with a cool and unblinking eye during my clumsy monologue, and she continued this steady gaze for a time after I had finished. She stirred the small and shapely headgear of black velvet and bird’s-wing which she had worn in from the street, just by the fraction of a forward inch, to show that she understood what I had been saying—and also very much which I had left unsaid.

“Hm—m!” the good lady remarked, at length. “I see!”

“Well, mamma, having seen,” Ermyntrude turned languidly in her chair to observe, lifting the hand which still rested within mine into full and patent view, and then withdrawing it abruptly—“having seen, and been seen, there’s really nothing more to do, is there?”

“She is very young,” said the mother, in a tentative musing manner which suggested the thought that I, on the other hand, was very much the other way.

Ermyntrude sniffed audibly, and rose to her feet. “I am three-and-twenty,” she said, “and that is enough, thank you.” There was something in it all which I did not understand. The sensation of being out of place, as in the trying-on room of a dressmaker’s, oppressed me. The sex were effecting sundry manouvres and countermarchings peculiar to themselves—so much I could see by the way in which the two were talking with their eyes—hut what it was all about was beyond me. The mother finally inclined her head to one side, and pursed together her lips. Ermyntrude drew herself to her full stature, threw up her chin for a moment like one of Albert Moore’s superb full-throated goddesses, and then relaxed with that half-cheerful sigh which we express in types with “heigho!” It was at once apparent to me that the situation had lightened—but how or why I cannot profess to guess. Uncle Dudley, to whom I subsequently narrated what I had observed, abounded in theories, but upon reflection they do not impress, much less convince, me. Here is in substance one of the several hypothetical conversations which he sketched out as having passed in that moment of pre-occupied and surcharged silence:

Mother [lowering brows]. You may be sure that at the very best it will be Bayswater.

Daughter [with quiver of nostrils]. Better that than hanging on for a Belgravia which never comes.

Mother [disclosing the tips of two teeth]. It is a chance of a title going for ever.

Daughter [curling lip]. What chance is ever likely here?

Mother [lifting brows]. He’s as old as Methusaleh!”

Daughter [flashing eyes]. That’s my business!

Mother [little trembling of the eyelashes]. You will never know how I have striven and struggled for you!

Daughter [smoothing features]. Merely the innate maternal instinct, my dear, common to all mammalia.

Mother [beginning to tip head sidewise]. It is true that Tristram is docile, sheep-like, simple——

Daughter [lifting her chin]. And old enough to be enchained at my feet all his life.

Mother [head much to one side]. And he has always been extremely cordial with me——

Daughter [chin high in air]. And not another girl in my set has had a proposal for years.

Mother [brightening eye]. We shall be in time to buy everything at the January sales!

[Mother smiles; Daughter sighs relief. The imaginations of both wander pleasantly off to visions of sublimated Christmas shopping, in co............