“I will enquire, my lord.”
“If she is disengaged, ask if she could spare me five minutes.”
Dickson withdrew, and shortly afterwards Lady Frederica tripped in, looking as though she considered somebody very much to blame for the dreariness of the afternoon.
“Aunt Rica,” said her nephew, “did you know of this preposterous idea of Sydney’s—teaching old women to sew or something, on a beastly afternoon like this?”
“Oh, yes, she asked my leave to do something of the kind,” Lady Frederica answered, with a yawn. “She said something, I remember, about the people being poor and miserable here, and wanting to help them, and you having told her you could do nothing. All she wanted was to do something or another for the women—I forget what—but I know it did not seem to me likely to damage her figure or complexion. Oh, I see, you don’t like it, but girls will amuse themselves, St. Quentin, and slumming is quite the last thing, you know!”
A remembrance of the girl’s earnest face as they talked on Christmas Day came over her cousin. How keen the child had been over the rebuilding of those cottages, which were a disgrace to him, he knew, and not the only blot by a long way on the great St. Quentin estates. So that was why she wished to change her watch. Why on earth couldn’t he have seen, and given her the money, instead of leaving her to sacrifice her own little treasures for the benefit of his tenants! Having failed to persuade him to do his duty by them, she was trying, with the little means she had, to do it for him. He crushed that unfinished letter to his agent impatiently between his fingers. The order he had been about to give him became if possible more distasteful than it had been before. How could he cut off all chance of doing something for his wretched tenants! And yet—and yet—what else was left for him to do but write?
“Well, St. Quentin, if you don’t want me any more I’ll go back to my novel,” Lady Frederica said with another yawn. “You’re most depressing company, my dear boy; almost as depressing as the weather!”
“Thanks awfully for coming,” he said absently. She turned to leave him; as she did so her eye fell upon the crumpled paper on the floor.
“St. Quentin,” she cried sharply, “you’re not telling Mr. Fane to cut down timber, are you? Gracious, what would your poor dear father have said!”
“What I feel,” he said bitterly, “that it’s a very good thing my reign is near its end.... Don’t stay if you’d rather not, Aunt Rica.”