The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (5.1895)

Suggestion

By Mrs. Ernest Leverson

IF Lady Winthrop had not spoken of me as “ that intolerable,
effeminate boy,” she might have had some chance of marrying
my father. She was a middle-aged widow ; prosaic, fond of
domineering, and an alarmingly excellent housekeeper ; the serious
work of her life was paying visits ; in her lighter moments she
collected autographs. She was highly suitable and altogether
insupportablej; and this unfortunate remark about me was, as
people say, the last straw. Some encouragement from father Lady
Winthrop must, I think, have received ; for she took to calling at
odd hours, asking my sister Marjorie sudden abrupt questions, and
being generally impossible. A tradition existed that her advice
was of use to our father in his household, and when, last year, he
married his daughter’s school-friend, a beautiful girl of twenty, it
surprised every one except Marjorie and myself.

The whole thing was done, in fact, by Suggestion. I shall
never forget that summer evening when father first realised, with
regard to Laura Egerton, the possible. He was giving a little dinner
of eighteen people. Through a mistake of Marjorie s (my idea) Lady
Winthrop did not receive her invitation tili the very last minute.
Of course she accepted—we knew she would—butunknowing that
it was a dinner party, she came without putting on evening-dress.
The Yellow Book—Vol. V. p Nothing