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Updated: June 24, 2025
Then he got up and left her, and did not speak to her again that evening, but he called on her the next day, and was very affectionate in his manner. In Mr Stumfold's mode of treating her she had found no difference. With Miss Todd, whom she met constantly in the street, and who always nodded to her very kindly, she had had one very remarkable interview.
There had been more than enough of it, Mr Stumfold thought; and if it were continued, Mr Stumfold would would make Littlebath too hot to hold the Christian Examiner. That was the full meaning of Mr Stumfold's threat; and, as the editor knew Mr Stumfold's power, the editor wisely turned a cold shoulder upon Mr Maguire.
But it should be first explained, before the nature of that visit is described, that Miss Mackenzie had twice been to Mrs Stumfold's house since the evening of Miss Todd's party, drinking tea there on both occasions, and had twice met Mr Maguire. On the former occasion they two had had some conversation, but it had been of no great moment.
There was something in this so awful that Miss Mackenzie hardly knew how to speak, or let it pass without speaking. Having a spirit of her own she did not like being told that she had been, as it were, sat upon and judged, and then admitted into Mrs Stumfold's society as a child may be admitted into a school after an examination.
Immediately before the kettle sat Mrs Stumfold. Immediately before another kettle, at another table, sat Miss Peters, a sister of Mrs Stumfold's. The back drawing-room in which they were congregated was larger than the other, and opened behind into a pretty garden. Mr Stumfold's lines in falling thus among the Peters, had fallen to him in pleasant places.
"I am not one of Mr Stumfold's people especially," she said, and then she went upstairs. The other John Ball came back from London just in time for dinner the middle one of the three, whom we will call Mr Ball. He greeted his cousin very kindly, and then said a word or two to his mother about shares. She answered him, assuming a look of interest in his tidings.
Then she had come almost direct from Arundel Street, and the house in Arundel Street had itself been very dingy. Mrs Stumfold's drawing-rooms were not dingy, nor were her own rooms in the Paragon. Her eye had become accustomed to better things, and she now saw at once how old were the curtains, and how lamentably the papers wanted to be renewed on the walls.
A full week had passed by after Mrs Stumfold's tea-party before Mr Rubb called again at the Paragon; and in the meantime Miss Mackenzie had been informed by her lawyer that there did not appear to be any objection to the mortgage, if she liked the investment for her money.
All the ladies in the room were in a fever of expectation, and Mr Stumfold asked the riddle again. "He won't tell them till we meet again; but there isn't one here who won't study the life of St Peter during the next week. And what they'll learn in that way they'll never forget." "But why was he like a little boy with his shoes off?" asked Miss Mackenzie. "Ah! that's Stumfold's riddle.
The people whom she had met at Mr Stumfold's had been all ladies and gentlemen; she, at least, had supposed them to be so, not having as yet received any special information respecting the wife of the retired coachbuilder.
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