“A good sign to have your maid like you, Mummy, or to have melancholy eyes?” Meg inquired. “I think she’s a rather ill-tempered looking woman. But of course anybody would adore Adrienne. She’s an angel of patience, I’m sure. I never met such an angel. We don’t grow them here,” said Meg, while Barney’s triumphant eyes said: “I told you so,” to Oldmeadow across the table.
After breakfast, in the sunlight on the terrace, Mrs. Chadwick confided her hopes to him. “She really is an angel, Roger. I never met anyone in the least like her. So good, and gifted, too, and all that money. Only think what it would mean for dear Barney. He could take back the farm; the lease falls in next year, and come back here to live.”
“You think she cares for him?”
“Yes; indeed I do. She cares for us all, already, as you can see. But I believe it’s because she’s adopting us all, as her family. And she said to me yesterday that she disapproved so much of our English way of turning out mothers and thought families ought to love each other and live together, young and old. That’s from being so much in France, perhaps. I told her I shouldn’t have liked it at all if old Mrs. Chadwick had wanted to come and live with Francis and me. She was such a masterful old lady, Roger, very Low Church, and quite dreadfully jealous of Francis. And eldest sons should inherit, of course, or what would become of estates? My dear father used always to say that the greatness of England was founded on landed estates. I told her that. But she looked at me quite gravely as if she hardly understood when I tried to explain—it all goes in with Waterloo being won on the fields of Eton, doesn’t it? It’s quite curious the feeling of restfulness she gives me, about Barney—a sort of Nunc Dimittis feeling, you know.”
“Only she doesn’t want you to depart. Well, that’s certainly all to the good and let’s hope England’s greatness won’t suffer from the irregularity. Has she told you much about her life? her people?” Oldmeadow asked. He could not find it in his heart to shadow such ingenuous contentment. And after all what was there to say against Miss Toner, except that she would change things?
“Oh, a great deal. Everything I asked; for I thought it best, quite casually you know, to find out what I could. Not people of any position, you know, Roger, though I think her mother was better in that way than her father; for his father made tooth-paste. It’s from the tooth-paste all the money comes. But it’s always puzzling about Americans, isn’t it? And it doesn’t really make any difference, once they’re over here, does it?”
“Not if they’ve got the money,” he could not suppress; it was for his own personal enjoyment and Mrs. Chadwick cloudlessly concurred: “No, not if they have the money. And she has, you see. And besides that she’s good and gifted and has had such a wonderful education. Her mother died five years ago. She showed me two pictures of her. A beautiful woman; very artistic-looking. Rather one’s idea of Corinne, though Corinne was really Madame de Staël, I believe; and she was very plain.”
“Was she dressed like Queen Louise of Prussia; coming down the steps, you know, in the Empire dress with white bound round her head?”
“Yes; she was. How did you know, Roger? Extremely picturesque; but quite a lady, too. At least”—Mrs. Chadwick hesitated, perplexed between kindliness and candour—“almost.”
“I heard about her from Mrs. Aldesey. You remember my American friend. She didn’t know her, but had seen her years ago in New York in that romantic costume.”