“He would be a comfort and a pride to a father;
but to Darrell, so distant a kinsman,—comfort!—why
and how? Darrell will provide for him, that
is all. A very gentlemanlike young man; gone
to Paris by my advice; wants polish and knowledge
of life. When he comes back he must enter society:
I have put his name up at White’s; may I introduce
him to you?”
Lady Montfort hesitated, and, after a pause, said,
almost rudely, “No.”
She left the Colonel, slightly shrugging his shoulders,
and passed into the billiard-room with a quick step.
Some ladies were already there looking at the players.
Lord Montfort was chalking his cue. Lady Montfort
walked straight up to him: her colour was heightened;
her lip was quivering; she placed her hand on his
shoulder with a wife-like boldness. It seemed
as if she had come there to seek him from an impulse
of affection. She asked with a hurried fluttering
kindness of voice, if he had been successful, and
called him by his Christian name. Lord Montfort’s
countenance, before merely apathetic, now assumed an
expression of extreme distaste. “Come to
teach me to make a cannon, I suppose!” he said
mutteringly, and turning from her, contemplated the
balls and missed the cannon.
“Rather in my way, Lady Montfort,” said
he then, and, retiring to a corner, said no more.
Lady Montfort’s countenance became still more
flushed. She lingered a moment, returned to
the drawing-room, and for the rest of the evening was
unusually animated, gracious, fascinating. As
she retired with her lady guests for the night she
looked round, saw Colonel Morley, and held out her
hand to him.
“Your nephew comes here to-morrow,” said
she, “my old play-fellow; impossible quite to
forget old friends; good night.”
“Les extremes
se touchent.”
The next day the gentlemen were dispersed out of doors,
a large shooting party. Those who did not shoot,
walked forth to inspect the racing stud or the model
farm. The ladies had taken their walk; some were
in their own rooms, some in the reception-rooms, at
work, or reading, or listening to the piano,—Honoria
Carr Vipont again performing. Lady Montfort was
absent; Lady Selina kindly supplied the hostess’s
place. Lady Selina was embroidering, with great
skill and taste, a pair of slippers for her eldest
boy, who was just entered at Oxford, having left Eton
with a reputation of being the neatest dresser, and
not the worst cricketer, of that renowned educational
institute. It is a mistake to suppose that fine
ladies are not sometimes very fond mothers and affectionate
wives. Lady Selina, beyond her family circle,
was trivial, unsympathizing, cold-hearted, supercilious
by temperament, never kind but through policy, artificial
as clock work. But in her own home, to her husband,
her children, Lady Selina was a very good sort of
woman,—devotedly attached to Carr Vipont,
