Her natural cheerfulness expanded like a sunflower, and when her son Malcolm secured a commission in the —th Hussars, her triumph was complete. Even the staggering news that Dick had been taken away from Eton to avoid expulsion for drunkenness proved only a momentary cloud on the broad horizon of her contentment.
When she was nineteen years of age Elise came to live with her mother, and as the fiery beauty of the child had mellowed into a sort of smouldering charm that owed something to the mystic atmosphere of convent life, Lady Durwent felt that an ally of importance had entered the arena.
Thus four years passed, and in 1913 (had peeresses been in the habit of taking inventories) Lady Durwent could have issued a statement somewhat as follows:
ASSETS.
1 Husband; a Peer.
1 Son; aged twenty-five; decently popular with his regiment.
1 Daughter; marriageable; aged twenty-three.
1 Town House.
1 Country Estate.
The goodwill of numerous unusual people, and the envy of a
lot of minor Peeresses.
LIABILITIES.
1 Son; aged twenty; at Cambridge; in perpetual trouble,
and would have been rusticated ere now had he not been the
son of a lord.
1 Ironmonger.
* * * * * *
'My dear,' said Lady Durwent, glancing at her daughter, who was reading a novel, 'hadn't you better go and dress?'
'Is there a dinner-party to-night?' asked the girl without looking up.