As the days went on, Doris, for all her sturdy self-reliance,
began to feel a little nervous inwardly. She
had been quite well-educated, first at a good High
School, and then in the class-rooms of a provincial
University; and, as the clever daughter of a clever
doctor in large practice, she had always been in touch
with the intellectual world, especially on its scientific
side. And for nearly two years before her marriage
she had been a student at the Slade School. But
since her imprudent love-match with a literary man
had plunged her into the practical work of a small
household, run on a scanty and precarious income,
she had been obliged, one after another, to let the
old interests go. Except the drawing. That
was good enough to bring her a little money, as an
illustrator, designer of Christmas cards, etc.;
and she filled most of her spare time with it.
But now she feverishly looked out some of her old
books—Pater’s “Studies,”
a volume of Huxley’s Essays, “Shelley”
and “Keats” in the “Men of Letters”
series. She borrowed two or three of the political
biographies with which Arthur’s shelves were
crowded, having all the while, however, the dispiriting
conviction that Lady Dunstable had been dandled on
the knees of every English Prime Minister since her
birth, and had been the blood relation of all of them,
except perhaps Mr. G., whose blood no doubt had not
been blue enough to entitle him to the privilege.
However, she must do her best. She kept these
feelings and preparations entirely secret from Arthur,
and she saw the day of the visit dawn in a mood of
mingled expectation and revolt.
CHAPTER II
It was a perfect June evening: Doris was seated
on one of the spreading lawns of Crosby Ledgers,—a
low Georgian house, much added to at various times,
and now a pleasant medley of pillared verandahs, tiled
roofs, cupolas, and dormer windows, apparently unpretending,
but, as many people knew, one of the most luxurious
of English country houses.
Lady Dunstable, in a flowing dress of lilac crepe
and a large black hat, had just given Mrs. Meadows
a second cup of tea, and was clearly doing her duty—and
showing it—to a guest whose entertainment
could not be trusted to go of itself. The only
other persons at the tea-table—the Meadowses
having arrived late—were an elderly man
with long Dundreary whiskers, in a Panama hat and
a white waistcoat, and a lady of uncertain age, plump,
kind-eyed, and merry-mouthed, in whom Doris had at
once divined a possible harbour of refuge from the
terrors of the situation. Arthur was strolling
up and down the lawn with the Home Secretary, smoking
and chatting—talking indeed nineteen to
the dozen, and entirely at his ease. A few other
groups were scattered over the grass; while girls
in white dresses and young men in flannels were playing
tennis in the distance. A lake at the bottom
of the sloping garden made light and space in a landscape
