‘Well, there was the season, and Victoria was not in condition for going out, and Maude was all for staying quietly with her; but old Lady Conway came about—a regular schemer—a woman I never could abide. She had married off her own daughters, and wanted her niece to practise on, that was the fact. Victoria says she always knew that she, Maude I mean, was very impressionable and impulsive, and so she wanted to have her out of harm’s way; but one could not prevent her aunt from getting hold of her and taking her out. Then people told us of her goings on with that scamp Clanmacklosky and that sister of his. Victoria talked to her by the yard, but she denied it, and we thought it all gossip. Regie came up for a couple of nights, and she was as sweet on him as ever, and sent him away thinking it all right; but the end of it was, she fought off going down to Rotherwood with us, but went to Brighton with Lady Conway, and the next thing we heard was that she wrote to throw Reginald over, and she married Clanmacklosky a month after she was twenty-one! I don’t think I ever saw Victoria so cut up, for we had really liked the girl and thought well of her. To this hour I believe it was all that woman’s doing, and that poor Maude has supped sorrow. She has lost all her good looks.’
‘And Regie has never got over it?’
‘Not so as to believe in a woman again.’
‘He used to be rather a joke for susceptibility, and was still a regular boy when we went out to Gibraltar. I thought him much graver.’
‘Exactly; since that affair his soul has gone into his regiment. It’s a wife to him, and luckily he got his promotion in time, so as not to be shelved.’
‘I suppose it was really an escape.’
‘I don’t know—she would have done very well in his hands. She is the sort of woman to be as you make her, and even now is a world too good for Clan. Victoria can never be quite cordial with her, but I can’t see the poor harassed thing without thinking what a sweet creature she once was, and wishing I’d had the sense to look after her better. But what I came here for, Lily, was to say you must let me have that Mysie of yours, since you won’t come yourself to this concern of ours. I’m afraid you won’t think much good has come of us, but we couldn’t do the Country Mouse much harm in a fortnight; and you know it is the wish of my heart that my lonely Fly should grow up on such terms with your flock as Florence and I did with you all.’
He pleaded quite piteously, and he was backed up by a letter from his wife, very grateful for her little Phyllis’s happy visit, reiterating the invitation to Lady Merrifield, and begging that if she still could not come herself, she would at least send Jasper and Mysie for the Butterfly’s Ball. Mysie’s fancy dress would be ready for her, only waiting for the final touches after it was tried on. Lady Florence Devereux, too, was near at hand, and wrote to promise to look after Mysie.
There was no refusing after this. Lady Florence was not far from being like a sister to her cousins. She had tended her mother’s old age, and had subsequently settled down into the lady of all work of Rotherwood parish. Lady Merrifield had much confidence in her, and indeed all she saw of Fly gave her a great respect for Lady Rotherwood’s management of her child. Harry was going to his uncle’s at Beechcroft for some shooting, and would bring Mysie home when Jasper went back to school.
So Gillian was called to her mother’s room to be told first of the arrangement, which certainly in some aspects was rather hard on her.