Marie looked a little surprised.
"Stop by all means if you feel inclined," she said. "I will send the carriage back for you."
Mildred laughed.
"Mutual confidence of the very first water," she observed.
Again the cook motif sounded, setting his teeth on edge.
"No, I will come with you, Marie," he repeated.
[CHAPTER XIII]
Maud Brereton was lying in a hammock underneath a big chestnut-tree in the garden of the house at Windsor. She had been here a fortnight alone, having been sent from London in disgrace by her mother after her refusal, in consequence of her interview with Marie Alston, to accept the riches and devotion of Anthony Maxwell. This fortnight she had spent in sublime inaction, surrounded as she was by all those things which to her made life lovable. Her dogs were here, her pony was here, the meadows were tall with hay, the river brimming, and the garden-beds presented every day some new miracle of unfolding colour. Each morning she had got up early and ridden in the park, while the day was still cool and dewy; she had read, not much; she had played the piano diligently; she had been the centre of an adoring crowd of dogs and gardeners; and for some days—not all this fortnight, indeed, but the bigger and earlier half of it—she had been completely happy in her own mild ruminative manner. It had been a source of great satisfaction to compare the rival merits of the two systems: London on the one hand; on the other, being in disgrace. For the sight of the hot square garden, she had here this cool, green lawn; for the riband of dull wood pavement up Grosvenor Street, the silver line of the Thames; for the companionship of languid and heated mankind, the eager dogs; and for the hopeless tedium of a ball, the cool vast night pouring in through the open windows of the drawing-room.