The women began to name dates. Those very close friends, Lady Burdon and Mrs. Espart, spoke of dates frequently. Mrs. Espart and Dora had already "come into the family" as Mrs. Espart smilingly expressed it, when, at Lord Burdon's death, and on being acquainted with her dear friend's intention to let the Mount Street house on a short lease and retire to Burdon Old Manor, she had offered herself as lessee. The offer had been most gratefully, most gladly accepted. The great town house was made over to Mrs. Espart for a seven years' term and thus, in Mrs. Espart's phrase, "remained in the family"—ready for Rollo and Dora, as the ladies plotted.
And now they were naming dates. "When Rollo is twenty-four," Lady Burdon said to Mrs. Espart, come over from Abbey Royal to lunch at the Manor one day, "look, dear, he is just on twenty now. You know my plans. Next year he is to go to Cambridge. His illness has thrown him back. But next year will be time enough. Three years at Cambridge, then, and that will bring him almost to twenty-three. Then I wish him to go abroad—to travel for a year. That is so good for a young man, I think. Then when he comes back he will be ready to settle down and he will come back just the age for that tradition of ours—celebrating comings-of-age at twenty-four instead of twenty-one. That would be so splendid for the wedding, wouldn't it?"
"Splendid!" Mrs. Espart agreed. "Splendid! That old Mr. Amber of yours was trying to tell me the other day how that twenty-four tradition arose. But, really, he mumbles so when he gets excited—!"
"Oh, he's hopeless," Lady Burdon agreed. Her tone dismissed his name as though she found his hopelessness a little trying, and she went back to "Yes, splendid, won't it be? When I look back, Ella, everything has gone wonderfully. From the very beginning, you know—the very beginning, I planned a good marriage for Rollo. It was so essential. To be your Dora—well, that makes it perfect; yes, perfect!"—and Lady Burdon stretched out her hands and gave a happy little sigh as though she put her hands into a happy future and touched her Rollo there.
"And I for Dora," Mrs. Espart said. "From the very beginning, too, I arranged great matches for Dora in my mind. That it should be your Rollo,"—she gave a little laugh at her adaptation of the words—"that it should be your Rollo—why, really, perfect is the word!"
They were silent for a space, enjoying the beauty of the hillside that the thinning years were disclosing.
"You've never said anything to Rollo?" Mrs. Espart asked.
"Oh, no—no, not directly, anyway. It will come about naturally, I feel that. They are so much together. And in any case Dora—Dora is so wonderfully beautiful, Ella. I couldn't conceive any man not falling in love with her. In a year or so's time, developing as she is—why, you'll change your mind perhaps—when they're all worshipping her!"
She laughed, and her laugh was very reassuringly returned. "But it is Rollo she will marry," Mrs. Espart smiled. "With her it is as you say with him—it will come naturally. In any case—well, she is being brought up as I was brought up. She is dutiful. You find so many girls encouraged in independence nowadays. Nothing is so harmful for a girl ultimately, I think."
Lady Burdon nodded her agreement. "How happy Rollo will be!" she said, and spoke with a little sigh so caressingly maternal and with eyes so fondly beaming that Mrs. Espart put out a hand to touch her and told her, "I love your devotion to Rollo, Nellie."