“Oh, frightful woman!” said Muriel airily.  “She was most awfully rude to me.  You would have thought that I wanted to burgle something.”  She gave an affected laugh.  “I simply stared through her.  I find that irritates that class of person frightfully ...  How do you like my sables, Jean?  Yes—­a present.”

“They are beautiful,” said Jean serenely, but to herself she muttered bitterly, “Opulent lumps!”

“David goes back to Oxford next week,” she said aloud, the thought of money recalling David’s lack of it.

“Oh, really!  How exciting for him,” Mrs. Duff-Whalley said.  “I suppose you won’t have heard from Miss Reston since she went away?”

“I had a letter from her a few days ago.”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley waited expectantly for a moment, but as Jean said nothing more she continued: 

“Did she talk of future plans?  We simply must fix them both up for a week at The Towers.  Lord Bidborough told us he had quite fallen in love with Priorsford and would be sure to come back.  I thought it was so sweet of him.  Priorsford is such a dull little place.”

“Yes,” said Jean; “it was very condescending of him.”

Then she remembered Richard Plantagenet, her friend, his appreciation of everything, his love for the Tweed, his passion for the hills, his kindness to herself and the boys—­and her conscience pricked her.  “But I think he meant it,” she added.

“Well,” Muriel said, “I fail to see what he could find to admire in Priorsford.  Of all the provincial little holes!  I’m constantly upbraiding Mother for letting my father build a house here.  If they had gone two or three miles out, but to plant themselves in a little dull town, always knocking up against the dull little inhabitants!  Positively it gets on my nerves.  One can’t go out without having to talk to Mrs. Jowett, or a Dawson, or some of the villa dwellers.  As I said to Lady Tweedie yesterday when I met her in the Eastgate, ‘Positively,’ I said, ’I shall scream if I have to say to anyone else, “Yes, isn’t it a nice quiet day for the time of year?"’ I’m just going to pretend I don’t see people now.”

“Muriel, darling, you mustn’t make yourself unpopular.  It’s not like London, you know, where you can pick and choose.  I quite agree that the Priorsford people need to be kept in their places, but one needn’t be rude.  And some of the people, the aborigines, as dear Gordon calls them, are really quite nice.  There are about half a dozen men one can ask to dinner, and that new doctor—­I forget his name—­is really quite a gentleman.  Plays bridge.”

Jean laughed suddenly and Mrs. Duff-Whalley looked inquiringly at her.

“Oh,” she said, blushing, “I remembered the definition of a gentleman in the Irish R.M.—­’a man who has late dinner and takes in the London Times.’ ...  Won’t you stay to tea?”