“But I never play cards,” protested Letty.
“There are other games of patience, my dear—pied de la lettre! Your husband has old-fashioned ideas about his partner’s duties, but is up to date about his own.”
“I don’t understand you, Francie.”
“No? well then I’ll explain. The wife creed is in his blood, and belongs to the prehistoric race that treated women as beasts of burden, and beat them with clubs; later on, women were domestic slaves, and more recently—say a hundred years ago—mere nurses and upper servants, kept at home all the year round making samplers and pickles, and shirts, and jam—and having babies!”
“Frances!”
“Am I raising the standard of revolt? I declare you are looking quite scared. Lady Rashleigh holds my views—modern and emancipated—no shirts or pickles for her—only jam, and lots of the best! When I was in Town the other day I saw her at the theatre; she has grown enormous, and was simply bulging out of her box. Lord Robbie was with her—displaying a wonderful expanse of shirt front, and a dazzling diamond stud that hit you in the eye—he looked such a dog! He is rather fond of me, and runs down here after tea; when you think he is snug in the smoking-room, he is sitting, figuratively, at my feet. I wouldn’t marry him for—let me see—three millions! There, I’ve finished the last, and my herring-boning, is a work of art.”
During her frequent visits to the Rectory, Mrs. Blagdon was liable to encounter the ‘small fry’; at first they stiffened, and looked at the lady with cold, unrecognising eyes; but when they discovered that this pretty, shy girl was guiltless of airs, and rather afraid of them, they suffered her acquaintance, and although they never entered one another’s houses, spoke to her when they met, offered the names of new books and new roses, and gave her, in the immediate neighbourhood, an excellent character, as an inoffensive nonentity.
By this time the County had almost forgotten the existence of Mrs. Blagdon. She did not hunt or go to balls, seemed to be perpetually in mourning, and was said to suffer from ‘nerves,’—and nerves in this century stand for so much! Occasionally she was to be met on the roads, driving her baby in a little governess-car, and looking ridiculously like some shy animal, that hoped to escape the notice of mankind!
Letty was lonely. She had never felt at home at Sharsley, but as if she were on a visit to some stiff, country house; it still seemed to hold the spirits of the dead and gone Scropes, and the great drawing-room, with its portraits of staring ancestors (long-waisted, long-faced, and long-fingered), black Indian cabinets, and book-cases of neglected books, gave her a chill.
At distant intervals Mrs. Hesketh came over to Sharsley (craftily and stealthily in the master’s absence), to dine and sleep, and her brief visits were Letty’s greatest pleasure. On the last of these occasions, Blagdon returned unexpectedly, and in a black humour—one of his most promising two-year-olds, had gone wrong.