"When do you think of returning? Gollop tells me there are plenty of pheasants this year. Surely, you have had enough of those dry German savants and that dull university-town?"
The hook was rather coarsely baited; it would hardly have deceived the most guileless and unsuspecting. Harold Purling at a glance could read between the lines; he could trace effect to cause, and readily understood why his mother was so anxious for his return.
"One of Lady Gayfeather's girls, is she? I never thought much of that lot. However—but why on earth should Lady Calverly take my dear mother up in this way, at the eleventh hour?"
He would have wondered yet more if he had seen how cordially Mrs. Purling had been welcomed to Compton Revel.
"It is so good of you to come to us," Lady Calverly said, with effusion. "We are so glad to have you here, and have looked forward to it for so long."
For about seventeen years, in fact, during which time Lord and Lady Calverly had completely ignored the existence of their near neighbour, Mrs. Purling. Compton Revel might have been a paradise, and the heiress an exiled peri waiting at the gates.
The party assembled was after Mrs. Purling's own heart. They were all great people, at least in name; and the heiress of the Purlings was heard to murmur that she did like to be in such good society—she felt so perfectly at home. And they all made much of her. One night she was handed in to dinner by a Duke, another by an ex-Cabinet Minister. The latter made her feel proud, for the first time in her life, of her son, and the line he had adopted so sorely against her will.
"Mr. Purling's paper on toxicology," he said, "is quite the cleverest thing that has appeared on the subject. My friend, Sir William—," he mentioned a physician of world-wide repute, "considers that Mr. Purling will go far."
Lady Calverly followed suit by declaring that Mr. Purling was a pattern young man, everyone gave him so good a character. They did hope to see him at Compton Revel directly he got back to England.
Then Miss Fanshawe metaphorically prostrated herself before Mrs. Purling, and by judicious phrases and ready sympathy completely won her good-will.