She saw herself the focus of the malicious tea-table gossip of all her friends.

Decidedly, it would not do.
She did her brother the justice to realize that he had overlooked the public effect of the disclosure of his painful domestic secret as completely as she had.

He had forgotten that his accession to the peerage would make him, as it were, a public figure, and the glamour which the newspapers would throw over his lifelong quest would invest every act of his life with a publicity from which he could not hope to escape.

If he had foreseen this, he would have made some other arrangement for his daughter's future, not for the girl's sake, but for the honour of the famous old name of which he was so fanatically proud.
The question remained, what was to be done?
Robert would have to be told, of course.

Mrs.Pendleton's first impulse was to retract her promise to take charge of Sisily, and wash her hands of the whole affair.