“That’s a fact, for so I did!” said Mrs Floore. “Though whether your ladyship would condescend to speak to me was more than I could tell! Not but what I’ve been watching you close, and for all you’re so tall and high-stepping, my lady, you’ve a friendly way with you, and you don’t look to me to be so haughty you hold your nose up at ordinary folk!”

“Indeed, I hope not!” said Serena, laughing.

Mrs Floore poked a finger into the ribs of a mild-looking man seated in a chair beside her, and said: “I don’t know where your wits have gone a-begging, Tom Ramford! Get up and offer your place to Lady Serena, man!”

In great confusion, Mr Ramford hastily obeyed this sharp command. His apologies and protestations were cut short, Mrs Floore saying kindly, but with decision: “There, that’ll do! You take yourself off now!”

“Poor man!” said Serena, as she seated herself. “You are very severe, ma’am! Pray, how do you come to know my name?”

“Lord, my dear, everyone knows who you are! I’ll wager you don’t know who I am, though!”

“You would lose, ma’am. You are Mrs Floore, a resident, I believe, of Bath,” Serena retorted.

The old lady chuckled richly, all her chins quivering. “Ay, so I am, and I’ll be bound you know it because you asked someone who the deuce that old fright could be, dressed in a gown with panniers!”

“I did ask who you might be, but I did not so describe you!” instantly responded Serena.

“Lord, I wouldn’t blame you! I’d look a worse fright if I was to stuff myself into one of these newfangled gowns you all wear nowadays, with a waist under my armpits and a skirt as straight as a candle! All very well for you, my lady, with the lovely slim figure you have, but I’ll tell you what I’d look like, and that’s a sack of meal, with a string tied round it! Ay, that makes you laugh, and I see that it’s quite true about your eyelids, though I thought it a piece of girl’s nonsense when I was told about it: they do smile!”

“Good God, who can have told you anything so ridiculous, ma’am?” demanded Serena, colouring faintly.

“Ah, that’s just it!” said Mrs Floore. “I daresay you’ve been wondering what made me wishful to become acquainted with you. Well, I’ve got a granddaughter that thinks the world of your ladyship, and by all accounts you’ve been mighty kind to her.”

“A granddaughter?” Serena repeated, stiffening suddenly in her chair. “You cannot mean that you are—But, no! Surely Lady Lale—the person who springs to my mind—was a Miss Sebden?”

“So she was,” agreed Mrs Floore affably. “Sebden was my first, and Sukey’s papa. I’ve had two good husbands, and buried ’em both, which is more than Sukey can boast of, for all the airs she gives herself!”

“Good gracious!” Serena exclaimed, wishing with all her heart that Rotherham could have been present, to share (as he certainly would) her own enjoyment. “Well, then, I am very happy to know you, Mrs Floore, for I have a sincere regard for little Emily Laleham. She has often taken pity on our dullness this winter, you know. We—Lady Spenborough and I—missed her sadly when she went to London.”

Mrs Floore looked gratified, but said: “That’s just your kindness, my lady, that makes you say so. I don’t deny I’m uncommonly partial to Emma, but I ain’t a fool, and I can see who it was that took pity, even if Emma hadn’t talked so much about you I was in a fair way to hating the sound of your name! Sukey—for Sukey she’s always been to me, and always will be, let her say what she likes!—sent her to spend the New Year with me, and it was Lady Serena this, and Lady Serena that till I’d very likely have had a fit of the vapours, if I’d been a fine lady, which I thank God I’m not, nor ever could be!”

“What an infliction!” Serena said, smiling. “I am astonished you should have wished to become acquainted with me, ma’am! I think, you know, that when she was only a child Emily thought me a very dashing female, because I was used to hunt with my father, and do all manner of things which seemed very romantical to her! I hope she may be wiser now that she knows me better. I fear I’m no model for a young female to copy.”

“Well, that, begging your pardon, is where you’re out, my dear!” said Mrs Floore shrewdly. “You’ve done Emma a great deal of good, and I don’t scruple to tell you so! She’s a good little soul, and as pretty as she can stare, but she hasn’t a ha’porth of common sense, and between the pair of them, Sukey, and that piece of walking gentility which calls herself a governess and looks to me more like a dried herring in petticoats, were in a fair way to ruining the poor child! But Emma, admiring your ladyship like she did, had the wit to see the difference between your manners and the ones her ma and that Miss Prawle was trying to teach her! Prawle! I’d Prawle her! “Grandma,” Emma said to me, “Lady Serena is always quite unaffected, and she is as civil to her servants as to Dukes and Marquises and all, and I mean to behave exactly like her, because she came over with the Conqueror, and is a great lady!” Which,” concluded Mrs Floore, “I can see for myself, though what this Conqueror has to say to anything I’m sure I don’t know!”

“Oh, no! Nor anyone else!” uttered Serena, quite convulsed.

“I promise you, I took no account of him,” said Mrs Floore. “The Quality have their ways, and we have ours, and what may be all very well for high-born ladies don’t do for the parson’s daughter, as you may say. All I know is that Emma will do better to copy the manners of an Earl’s daughter than her ma’s, and so I told her!”

Serena could only say: “Indeed, she need copy no one’s manners, ma’am! Her own are very pleasing, and unaffected.”

“Well, to be sure, I think so,” said Mrs Floore, beaming upon her, “but I’m no judge, though I did marry a gentleman! Oh, yes! Mr Sebden was quite above my touch, and married me in the teeth of his grand relations, as you may say. You might not think it to look at me now, but I was very much admired when I was a girl. Dear me, yes! Such suitors as I had! Only I took a fancy to poor George, and though my Pa didn’t like the match above half, George being too idle and gentlemanly for his taste, he never could deny me anything I’d set my heart on, and so we were married, and very happily, too. Of course, his family pretty well cast him off, but he didn’t care a button for that, nor for turning me into a grand lady. Mind you, when Pa died, and left his whole fortune to me, the Sebdens began to pay me a lot of civilities, which was only to be expected, and which I was glad of, on account of Sukey. Yes, I thought nothing was too good for my Sukey, so pretty as she was, and with her Pa’s genteel ways and all! Ah, well! I often think now that her brother wouldn’t have grown up to despise his ma, however much money had been spent on sending him to a fashionable school!”

A gusty sigh prompted Serena to say: “Indeed, I didn’t know you had had a son that died! I am so sorry!”

“Well, I didn’t, not exactly,” said Mrs Floore. “Not but what I sometimes feel it just as much as if he had died, for I’m sure he’d have been a good, affectionate boy. The thing was I always longed for a son, but the Lord never blessed us with more than the one child. No. There was only Sukey, and everything that money could buy she had. She went to a grand school in London, and made all manner of fine friends there, I warrant you! So, when poor George died, and the Sebdens offered to bring Sukey out, I let them do it, and the next thing I knew was she was engaged to marry Sir Walter Laleham. Between you and me, my lady, he never seemed to me any great thing, though I’m bound to say I didn’t know then what he was going to cost me, first and last! Not that I grudge it, because this I will say: he may be a gamester and he may drink a deal too much, but he ain’t ashamed of his ma-in-law, and if it weren’t for Sukey I might go to his house, and welcome!”

Staggered by these extremely frank confidences, Serena could think of nothing better to say than: “I believe Sir Walter is generally very well liked. My father and he were at Eton together, and afterwards at Oxford.”

“Ay, were they so? Oh, well, it’s a fine thing for a man to be of the first rank, but it’s a better thing to have a bit of sense, if you’ll pardon my saying so! And what with offering for Sukey, who, he might ha’ known, would rule the roost, even if he’d been a Duke, and never having the wit to back the right horse, he’s my notion of a silly noddy! But, there! I shouldn’t be saying so, and no more I would have, only that there’s something about your ladyship I like, besides knowing you was kind to Emma. What’s more, says I to myself, if you’ve been living in the same place as Sukey it’s not likely I could tell you anything you didn’t know about her, because it’s my belief those airs of hers wouldn’t deceive a new-born baby! Now, would they?”

“I assure you, ma’am. Lady Laleham is—is everywhere received!”

“I know that well enough, my dear, and many’s the time I’ve enjoyed a laugh over it. For though I don’t deny it was marrying Sir Walter that took her into the first circles, it’s me that keeps her there!”

Meeting frankness with frankness, Serena said: “I don’t doubt it, ma’am. Even had I not guessed as much from things Emily has said, it is common knowledge that Sir Walter—as the saying goes—married money.”

Mrs Floore chuckled. “I’ll go bail it is! Ah, well! If it weren’t for the silly fellow getting knocked into horsenails so often, and him and Sukey not daring to provoke me for fear I might leave my fortune away from them, let alone providing for Emma’s coming-out, I daresay I should never see anything of either of ’em, nor my grandchildren neither, so maybe its all for the best. It suited Sukey very well when I married Ned Floore, because who’s to know I’m her ma, unless I tell ’em, which in the general way I don’t? What’s more, Floore was a very warm man, with never a chick nor child of his own, and every penny he had he left to me, and no strings tied to ’em! So whenever I feel low I tell Sukey I’ve taken a fancy to pay her a visit in her fine London house. It’s as good as a play to see how many excuses she’ll make up to put me off, never dreaming that I do it only to tease her! I never had any taste for grand company myself, but Sukey has, and you can say that’s my doing, for having sent her to a smart school. So she needn’t be afraid! I can’t help laughing at her, but I’ve got no notion of embarrassing her: no, nor Emma either!”