I was introduced to an elderly lady whom I addressed for the rest of the evening as Lady Danvers, until Charles casually mentioned that his mother was dead, and that, until the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill was passed, he did not anticipate that his aunt Mary would take upon herself the position of step-mother to her orphaned nephews.

The severe elderly lady, then, who beamed so sweetly upon Ralph, and regarded Charles with such manifest coldness, was their aunt Lady Mary Cunningham.

She had known Sir John slightly in her youth, she said, as she graciously made room for me on her sofa, and she expressed a very proper degree of regret at his sudden death, considering that he had not been a personal friend in any way.
"We all have our faults, Colonel Middleton," said Lady Mary, with a gentle sigh, which dislodged a little colony of crumbs from the front of her dress.

"Sir John, like the rest of us, was not exempt, though I have no doubt the softening influence of age would have done much, since I knew him, to smooth acerbities of character which were unfortunately strongly marked in his early life." She had evidently not known Sir John in his later years.
As she continued to talk in this strain I endeavored to make out which of the young ladies present was the one to whom Ralph was engaged.

I was undecided as to which it was of the two to whom I had already been introduced.