it is that I love. You knew it before.' And then she threw herself on her knees, and hid her face on her mother's lap.
Lady Staveley had known it, but up to that moment she had hoped that that knowledge might have remained hidden as though it were unknown.
CHAPTER XI.
MRS. FURNIVAL'S JOURNEY TO HAMWORTH.
When Peregrine got back to The Cleeve he learned that there was a lady with his mother. He had by this time partially succeeded in reasoning himself out of his despondency. He had learned at any rate that his proposition to marry into the Staveley family had been regarded with favour by all that family except the one whose views on that subject were by far the most important to him; and he had learned, as he thought, that Lady Staveley had no suspicion that her daughter's heart was preoccupied. But in this respect Lady Staveley had been too cunning for him. 'Wait!' he said to himself as he went slowly along the road. 'It's all very well to say wait, but there are some things which won't bear waiting for. A man who waits never gets well away with the hounds.' Nevertheless as he rode into the court-yard his hopes were somewhat higher than they had been when he rode out of it.
'A lady! what lady? You don't mean Lady Mason?'
No. The servant did not mean Lady Mason. It was an elderly stout lady who had come in a fly, and the elderly stout lady was now in the drawing-room with his mother. Lady Mason was still upstairs. We all know who was that elderly stout lady, and we must now go back and say a few words as to her journey from Orange Street to Hamworth.
On the preceding evening Mrs. Furnival had told Martha Biggs what was her intention; or perhaps it would be more just to say that Martha Biggs had worked it out of her. Now that Mrs. Furnival had left the fashionable neighbourhood of Cavendish Square, and located herself in that eastern homely district to which Miss Biggs had been so long accustomed, Miss Biggs had been almost tyrannical. It was not that she was less attentive to her friend, or less willing to slave for her with a view to any possible or impossible result. But the friend of Mrs. Furnival's bosom could not help feeling her opportunity. Mrs. Furnival had now thrown herself very much upon her friend, and of course the friend now expected unlimited privileges;—as is always the case with friends in such a position. It is very well to have friends to lean upon, but it is not always well to lean upon one's friends.
