"And dear old Jack. Tell me when you write what Jack has been doing." Then she put out her hand and he held it. "I wonder whether you will ever remember—" But she did not quite know what to bid him remember, and therefore turned away her face and wiped away a tear, and then smiled as she turned her back on him. The carriage was at the door, and the ladies flocked into the hall, and then not another word could be said.
"That's what I call a really nice country house," said Lady Augustus as she was driven away. Arabella sat back in the phaeton lost in thought and said nothing. "Everything so well done, and yet none of all that fuss that there is at Mistletoe." She paused but still her daughter did not speak. "If I were beginning the world again I would not wish for a better establishment than that. Why can't you answer me a word when I speak to you?"
"Of course it's all very nice. What's the good of going on in that way? What a shame it is that a man like that should have so much and that a girl like me should have nothing at all. I know twice as much as he does, and am twice as clever, and yet I've got to treat him as though he were a god. He's all very well, but what would anybody think of him if he were a younger brother with £300 a year." This was a kind of philosophy which Lady Augustus hated. She threw herself back therefore in the phaeton and pretended to go to sleep.
The wheels were not out of sight of the house before the attack on the Trefoils began. "I had heard of Lady Augustus before," said Lady Penwether, "but I didn't think that any woman could be so disagreeable."
"So vulgar," said Miss Penge.
"Wasn't she the daughter of an ironmonger?" asked the elder Miss Godolphin.
"The girl of course is handsome," said Lady Penwether.
"But so self-sufficient," said Miss Godolphin.
"And almost as vulgar as her mother," said Miss Penge.
"She may be clever," said Lady Penwether, "but I do not think I should ever like her."