‘Emily was a little thing who was about everywhere--the child of the parish I used to call her. A girl who has lost her mother is so often like that, everybody’s child. I don’t say it’s not very nice as long as they’re children. One gets more used to them. She was always dancing about through everybody’s house--thank you, General, I couldn’t take any more cake--there wasn’t a house in the parish, rich or poor, but Emily was dancing out and in----’ ‘Very bad for the child,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen. ‘Do you think so?’ said Miss Grey; ‘well, I don’t know, as long as she was a child.’ ‘If it was bad for the child, my dear, the woman has come handsomely out of it,’ said the General, carrying the cake into the dark corner to Mrs. Kendal. ‘My dear lady, one morsel more--to keep me company.’ ‘Oh! General, on that inducement--but only a very, very small piece---- ’ ‘It’s bad when the child grows into a woman,’ said little Miss Grey, shaking her little head; ‘she was as dear a girl as ever lived--not one of them now is fit to hold the candle to what she was. Mab?--Mab’s a darling, the honestest little straightforward thing: and she would have been safer than Emily--she would never have been taken in--as her mother was.’ ‘Dear Miss Grey,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, ‘another cup of tea: and you were going to tell us about the Swinfords--for we all know there was something: she was a Seymour, wasn’t she, of a very good family?’ ‘But foreign blood in her,’ said Miss Grey; ‘I think her mother was a Russian; she always was fond of foreign things and foreign ways; he was a dear, good, quiet man. It never came into his head that anything could go wrong----’ ‘No: why should it, in a quiet neighbourhood like this----?’ ‘Oh! I like to hear you speak of a quiet neighbourhood. When the Hall was in full swing it was about as quiet as--as Windsor Castle in the old days, before Her Majesty knew what trouble was; always something going on, the town full of visitors; entertainments that were in _The Morning Post_, and every kind of pleasure. They used to come down in the middle of the summer, from their town house, for a few days at a time, and bring half the town with them; and in autumn in the time of the partridges----’ ‘There could never be much shooting,’ said the General with satisfaction, as on a subject he knew. ‘At the other end of the estate, the forest end--I have heard there was not very much, but it was very good; that is to say, it didn’t last very long, but as long as it lasted--at all events the shooting might be only a pretence: but the house was always full, that is the only thing I know----’ ‘I daresay,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, ‘it will be so again; a young man fond of company, like young Mr. Swinford.’ ‘Oh! you may be sure it will be so again. I don’t know about him; but I do know about Mrs. Swinford----’