‘Sir John and Lady Raymond and Miss Raymond in the drawing-room.’
Unappreciating the benefit of changing the current of thought, Phœbe lamented their admission, and moved reluctantly to the great rooms, where the guests looked as if they belonged to a more easy and friendly region than to that world of mirrors, damask, and gilding.
Sir John shook hands like an old friend, but his wife was one of those homely ladies who never appear to advantage in strange houses, and Phœbe had not learnt the art of ‘lady of the house’ talk, besides feeling a certain chilliness towards Mervyn’s detractors, which rendered her stiff and formal. To her amaze,
however, the languishing talk was interrupted by his entrance; he who regarded Sir John as the cause of his disappointment; he who had last met Susan Raymond at the time of his rejection; he whom she had left prostrate among the sofa cushions; he had absolutely exerted himself to brush his hair and put on coat and boots, yet how horribly ill and nervous he looked, totally devoid of his usual cool assurance, uncertain whether to shake hands with the two ladies, and showing a strange restless eagerness as though entirely shaken off his balance.
Matters were mended by his entrance. Phœbe liked Lady Raymond from the moment she detected a sign to the vehement Sir John not to keep his host standing during the discussion of the robbery, and she ventured on expressing her gratitude for his escort on the day of the hunt. Then arose an entreaty to view the scene of the midnight adventure, and the guests were conducted to the gallery, shown where each party had stood, the gas-pipe, the mark of the pistol-shot, and the door was opened to display the cabinet, and the window of the escape. To the intense surprise of her brother and sister, Bertha was examining her emeralds.
She came forward quite at her ease, and if she had been ten years a woman could not more naturally have assumed the entertainment of Lady Raymond, talking so readily that Phœbe would have believed the morning’s transactions a delusion, but for Mervyn’s telegraph of astonishment.
The visitors had been at the Holt, and obtained a promise from Miss Charlecote to spend the ensuing Saturday week at Moorcroft. They begged the sisters to accompany her. Phœbe drew back, though Mervyn hurried out declarations of his not wanting her, and the others never going out, till she hardly knew how it had been decided; but as the guests departed she heard Mervyn severely observing to Bertha—‘no, certainly I should not send you to keep company with any well-behaved young ladies.’
‘Thank you, I have no desire to associate with commonplace girls,’ said Bertha, marching off to the west wing.
‘You will go, Phœbe,’ said Mervyn.
‘Indeed, if I did it would be partly for the sake of giving change to Bertha, and letting her see what nice people really are.’