“Then you must come down, as I said—you and Miss Rothesay—to S—shire; our part of the country is very beautiful. I should be most happy to see you at Farnwood.”
She urged the invitation with an easy grace, even cordiality, which charmed Mrs. Rothesay, to whom it brought back the faint reflex of her olden life—the life at Merivale Hall.
“I should like to go, Olive,” she said, appealingly. “I feel dull, and want a change.”
“You shall have a change, darling,” was the soothing but evasive answer. For Olive had a tincture of the old Rothesay pride, and had formed a somewhat disagreeable idea of the position the struggling artist and her blind mother would fill as charity-guests at Farnwood Hall. So, after a little conversation with Mrs. Fludyer, she contrived that the first plan should melt into one more feasible. There was a pretty cottage, the squire's lady said, on the Farnwood estate; Miss Fludyer's daily governess had lived there; it was all fitted up. What if Miss Rothesay would bring her mother there for the summer months? It would be pleasant for all parties.
And so, very quickly, the thing was decided—decided as suddenly and unexpectedly as things are, when it seems as though not human will, but destiny held the balance.
Mrs. Fludyer seemed really pleased and interested; she talked to Miss Meliora less about her clematis than about her two inmates—a subject equally grateful to the painter's sister.
“There is something quite charming about Miss Rothesay—the air and manner of one who has always moved in good society. Do you know who she was? I should apologise for the question, but that a friend of mine, looking at her picture, was struck by the name, and desired me to inquire.”
Meliora explained that she believed Olive's family was Scottish, and that her father was a Captain Angus Rothesay.
“Captain Angus Rothesay! I think that was the name mentioned by my friend.”
“Shall I call Olive? Perhaps she knows your friend,” observed Meliora.