"Well, I don't suppose you'll kiss him; but I'm quite sure you won't treat him stiffly, my dear. You may begin like that, but you're incapable of keeping it up."
Lady Crowborough sighed. "I am like that," she admitted. "I get carried away."
When the party from Pershore Castle had driven off, Lady Eldridge took her sister-in-law into the house, leaving the young people still at their games, and Sir William, who had changed into gleaming white, playing with them. Lady Eldridge was a handsome dark-eyed, dark-haired woman, very well preserved for her years, which were about the same as those of Mrs. Eldridge, but without the look of fragile youth that was the note of that lady's appearance in her most favourable moments. She had an agreeable, decisive manner of speech, and a straightforward, honest look. The two of them had been friends at school, and it was at Hayslope Hall that Lady Eldridge had first met her husband, at that time a young barrister, not entirely briefless, or he would not have been in a position to marry, but with nothing in his prospects to indicate the opulence that he now so much enjoyed.
Lady Eldridge's special room was the most recent addition to the house, pleasing in its proportions and decoration, and beautifully but quietly furnished. Mrs. Eldridge sank into a deep cushioned chair, and said with a plaintive sigh: "I wish I could afford a room like this. You've made such a perfect success of it, Eleanor. I don't think it could possibly be nicer."
"It's very sweet of you to say so, my dear. But I don't think you have any cause to grumble, with all the beautiful old things you have in your room. Of course these are mostly old, too, but then they have all been bought. I might easily have gone wrong, you know. You don't think it looks like just money, do you?"
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" Mrs. Eldridge held up hands of expostulation. Then she dropped the subject. "The Crowboroughs want to bury the hatchet," she said. "I'm glad enough, I do hate rows, especially between old friends. But my poor old Edmund had a lot to put up with. I suppose Lord Crowborough means well. It's what everybody says of him. It's what they generally do say of thoroughly tiresome people, isn't it?—especially if they've got titles. Of course he is tiresome, and so is she, but both of them have their uses, so one puts up with it."
Lady Eldridge laughed. Her laugh was agreeable to listen to, and always meant that she was amused. "What uses?" she asked.
"Well, there's the Castle to go to, for one thing."
"You used to bewail your lot in being expected to go so much to the Castle."