So the preparations were made and the guests bidden.
Lady Frederica groaned a good deal over “St. Quentin’s fads,” as she called them. “If he wants to entertain, he might just as well have consulted my pleasure by giving a dinner or a dance to our own set,” she complained; “but to expect me to be enthusiastic over the coming of a lot of old farmers is a little too much!”
Sydney did not remember that St. Quentin had asked Lady Frederica to be enthusiastic, or indeed be anything except be there, but of course she did not say so.
Lord St. Quentin asked his cousin Lord Braemuir to come down to stay at the castle, and take the head of the table at the dinner.
He was a bluff, hearty-looking man, and Sydney took a fancy to him because he spoke kindly of her young mother and father, and seemed to think they had been hardly treated.
“I never could see the girl was to blame,” he told St. Quentin, when they were alone together. “She was a child and poor Frank was another, and if only Gwenyth had let well alone, there would have been no harm done. But perhaps it was just as well she did interfere, for you’ve got a charming little girl for your heir, Quin, my boy. Well, how things turn out! Fancy little Miss Henderson’s child coming to be Marchioness of St. Quentin!”
The ladies dined in the library with St. Quentin that night—Lady Frederica very magnificent in green and gold, with the Verney topazes gleaming in her hair. Sydney was all in white, and wore no jewelry. Lady Frederica was rigid in her views upon the etiquette of dress for girls not yet “out.”
The girl had insensibly improved very much during the past month in style and dignity. She held herself better, and had grown to be considerably less shy. St. Quentin watched her with approval as she sat down after dinner beside Miss Osric, and began a low-toned conversation, which should not interfere with Lady Frederica’s rather high-pitched stream then flowing over him.
She was looking very pretty too, he thought; with a colour in her small delicately-cut face and an earnest look in the great grey eyes. “Yes, Braemuir was right,” he thought to himself, “I have got a very charming heir!”