The introduction was duly made, and Virginia, palpitating under her air of assured ease, talked to him for some little time, sitting with him on the daïs. She knew that this kind old man who chatted pleasantly with her, making feeble little jokes in his asthmatic voice, which his eyes, plainly admiring her, asked her to smile at, was the most important of all Dick's relations, besides being the most important man in the county, and that if she could win him to like her his influence might well avail to ease her lover's path. That he did like her and was prepared to accept her in friendly wise as a neighbour was plain. But she had a moment of fright when he said, "We are dancing at Kemsale on Monday night. You must come. Where is Eleanor, I wonder?" And he looked round for Lady Kemsale, his widowed daughter-in-law, who kept house for him.
"I am not sure," she said hurriedly. She did not know in the least how much he knew, or whether he knew anything. "Captain Clinton found me my house here, but——" She did not know how to go on, and feared she had already said too much in her confusion, but he turned towards her.
"Oh, I know, I know," he said kindly, and then beckoned to his daughter-in-law, a stout, rather severe-looking lady in steely grey, who greeted Virginia without smiling and gave the required invitation rather coldly.
"I will send you a card," she said, "and please bring any friends you may have with you."
Lady Kemsale had just heard the story of his troubles from the Squire, who had found in her a sympathetic listener, and she had heard that Virginia had once danced on the stage. She would have preferred to have ignored her, but Lord Meadshire's commands must be obeyed, and even as she obeyed them and gave the invitation her sympathy with the Squire's troubles began to wane and she said to herself that he must have made a mistake. There was nothing of the stage-charmer about this woman, and Lady Kemsale thought she knew all about that class of temptress, for her own nephew had recently married one of them. She preserved her stately, unsmiling air as she turned away, but she was already softened, if Virginia had only known it.
But Virginia's sensibilities had already taken renewed fright at her manner, and in a way the exhibition of which now somewhat disturbed old Lord Meadshire. She rose to her feet, and her air was no less stately than that of Lady Kemsale. "It is very kind of you to ask me to your house," she said, "but I think under the present circumstances I would rather not come." Then she made him a bow and stepped off the daïs, and was immediately seized by her partner of the dance that was then in progress. She was angry, but did not speak to him until they had circled the room twice. She was willing to pay court to the people amongst whom she was going to marry if they treated her properly. She was willing to do even more than that for Dick's sake, and to run the risk of slights, and she had done so by staying at Blaythorn, as he had asked her to do, and by coming here to-night. But she was not going to put up with slights from women who chose to treat her as of no account and as if she were anxious at all costs to obtain their countenance. There might be women who would be glad to gain entrance to a house like Kemsale even after such an invitation as Lady Kemsale had given her, but she was not one of them. The invitation, if it came after what she had said to Lord Meadshire, should be refused. The woman whom Dick was going to marry would not be recognised on those terms. She would wait until she could go to Kemsale as an equal, and if that time never came she would not go at all. In the meantime she was spending a very wearing evening, and had an impulse to cut it all short and summon Miss Dexter to accompany her home. But the thought that she was going through it for Dick's sake sustained her, and she said to herself that since she had wrought up her courage to come she would not run away.
The person who did run away, before the dancing was half over, was the Squire. He could stand it no longer. He could not remain in the refreshment-room all the evening, and, as he hated cards, the solace of the tables, set out quite in old Assembly-room style in another room, did not avail him. If he led out a dowager to take his part in a square dance there was always the haunting fear that Virginia might be brought into the same set, and if he sat and looked on at the round dances the hateful sight of her dark head and slender form was always before him. Moreover, he had not yet talked to any one who had not either made some remark about her or asked him why Dick was not there, or, worse still, maintained an ominous silence on the subject of both of them, showing plainly that he or she was aware of the disturbance in his household, which galled him exceedingly, although to sympathetic and assumedly secret ears like those of Lady Kemsale he was ready to talk his fill, and gain relief from doing so. He could not keep what he felt out of his face, and he saw people looking at him with furtive amusement as he sat there glowering at the assembly, or trying his best to talk as if he had nothing on his mind. He felt instinctively that the story was being put all about the room, as indeed it was, for rumour was already in the air, and had gained impulse by Dick's absence and his own behaviour.
And then Lord Meadshire—Cousin Humphrey, as he had called him ever since he was a child, and called him still—had talked to him about Dick and about Virginia, coupling their names together, as he disgustedly said to himself, showing plainly that he knew what was on foot, and inviting confidences if the Squire felt disposed to give them. He did not feel so disposed. He was angry with his kinsman for so publicly giving his countenance to Virginia, flouting him in the face—so he felt it—making it appear as if he, in the place where he had all his life cut a distinguished figure, and his wishes, were not worth regarding. "I don't know the lady and don't want to," he said, one might say petulantly. "And as for Dick—she wanted to come here and he told her of a house. Considering he has scarcely been near the place since she came, it's most annoying to hear him talked about as if there was something between them. I hope you'll do what you can to contradict that report. You can do a lot if you want to."
Lord Meadshire glanced at him quizzically. He knew well enough his ostrich-like habit of burying one fact in a Sahara of words and leaving a dozen for all the world to see. "Come now, my dear Edward," he said persuasively, "why not make friends with the lady? You will find her everything she ought to be, and a charming woman into the bargain. If Dick is a little struck with her charms, I don't wonder at it, and there's nothing to be alarmed at. The best thing you can do is to keep your eye on her while he is away."
But this was a little too much. Cousin Humphrey had been his boyhood's idol, and was the only member left of an older generation of his family with the exception of Aunt Laura, but if he thought that he could treat him as an obstinate child who was to be coaxed into good behaviour, he was mistaken. "Nothing will induce me to make friends with her or to recognise her in any way," he said, with decision. "Where's Nina? I'm going home. I can't stand this any longer."