Lance had fled, so soon as he had extricated Wilmet from her perilous attitude. No wonder; particular as he was about young ladies, his déshabillé, nearly as bad as that of Cleomenes, must have been dreadful to him; and it was Wilmet who gave Cherry an arm over the oak floor. They put Dr. May into the library, where Clement came to light; while they took the daughters upstairs, where they were almost as much pleased to see, as the sisters to show, the beauties of the quaint old house, and were perfectly sensible of the well-bred simplicity, playfulness, and absence of all false shame, so entirely different from what they had expected.
Ethel had been prepared to spend her day in a state of good-humoured forbearance and repression of Gertrude's intolerance. Instead of which she found herself in that state of ease which comes of accordance of tone, and she saw—what she had never beheld before—in her keen unvenerative sister, who had never formed any kind of attachment out of her own family and not many in it, the process of falling into an enthusiasm. That lame Miss Underwood, like an old fairy with her ivory-headed crutch stick; her marked eye-brows, thin expressive face, with its flashes of fun and plaintive sweetness, youthful complexion and pronounced features, was—what Daisy called—'so uncommon' as to strike her fancy, to a wonderful degree, and she had hardly eyes or ears to spare for anybody else; when at the sound of the dinner-bell, which had a charming little extinguisher of its own at the top of the octagon tower, the whole of the party were exhibited in the dining-room—Felix and John Harewood from a round of inspection with the bailiff; Angela from the kitchen-garden. She had been set to work unpacking books with Robina, but becoming discursive, had flown off to a tour on the leads with Bernard. 'So much less considerate than Stella!' sighed Robin, left to the tasks that could only fall to the quietest and strongest female of the family. For one happy half hour she was cheered by Will, who volunteered help, gave her all the volumes wrong, or put them upside-down, then lighting on Chaucer, read aloud Palæmon and Arcite, with comments, until Angela burst in, and whirled him away to shake an apple-tree for half a dozen urchins, with whom she had made acquaintance in the churchyard; and Robina had toiled on alone till, on Wilmet's return, she was swept into the furniture vortex.
Dr. May's heart, like Ethel's, warmed to the long table so like their own best days; and the perfect absence of pretension in the plain leg of mutton and vegetables delighted them eagerly. Moreover, he was dazzled by Wilmet's grand beauty, and the general comeliness of his old friend's family, while he talked with immense satisfaction to Felix and Major Harewood; but some strange change had fallen on Daisy.
She had been only fourteen at the time of her escapade on the Kitten's Tail, and now at nineteen the presence of the gentleman concerned in it seemed actually to keep her silent, so that she did not respond to the advances of her nearest contemporaries, Robina and Angela, one of whom had a good deal more manner and the other a good deal more assurance than she could boast; and though Lance had reappeared in irreproachable costume, she daunted his attempts at conversation by her evident determination to listen to the elders' discussion of architects.
'Aren't you going to the Church?' asked Robina, finding him leaning against the cloister door when there had been a move to show the Church to the visitors.
'No use in crowding them up with all the ruck. I shall strip, and go back to my organ-pipes. I shall not come here much. 'Tis no use being in a false position.'
'Nonsense. A false position is pretending to be what one is not.'
'Here I pretend to be on equality, and am shown my place,' said Lance, disconsolately; for he was very soft-hearted, and had an immense turn for young ladies.
'You're annihilated by a breath,' said Robin; 'besides, it was only shyness.'
'Shy? You should have seen her last time!'