Oldal 40 [40]
20 LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.
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that she was only a common American girl, who had entrapped his
son into marrying her because she knew he was an earl’s son. The
old lawyer himself had more than half believed this was all true.
He had seen a great many selfish, mercenary people in his life, and
he had not a good opinion of Americans. When he had been
driven into the cheap street, and his coupé had stopped before the
cheap, small house, he had felt actually shocked. It seemed really
quite dreadful to think that the future owner of Dorincourt Castle and
Wyndham Towers and Chorlworth, and all the other stately splen¬
dors, should have been born and brought up in an insignificant house
in a street with a sort of green-grocery at the corner. He wondered
what kind of a child he would be, and what kind of a mother he had.
He rather shrank from seeing them both. He had a sort of pride
in the noble family whose legal affairs he had conducted so long,
and it would have annoyed him very much to have found himself
obliged to manage a woman who would seem to him a vulgar, money¬
loving person, with no respect for her dead husband's country and
the dignity of his name. It was a very old name and a very splen¬
did one, and Mr. Havisham had a great respect for it himself, though
he was only a cold, keen, business-like old lawyer.
When Mary handed him into the small parlor, he looked around it
critically. It was plainly furnished, but it had a home-like look; there
were no cheap, common ornaments, and no cheap, gaudy pictures ; the
few adornments on the walls were in good taste, and about the room
were many pretty things which a woman’s hand might have made.
‘Not at all bad so far,” he had said to himself; "but perhaps the
Captain’s taste predominated.” But when Mrs. Errol came into the
room, he began to think she herself might have had something to
do with it. If he had not been quite a self-contained and stiff old
gentleman, he would probably have started when he saw her. She
looked, in the simple black dress, fitting closely to her slender figure,