Dora had a momentary tendency to giggle at the anticlimax of this. But she checked it, and again her impatience rose to the surface.
“Adonis?” she suggested. “But are not good looks one of those superficial things which we rate too high?”
Lady Austell smiled.
“Ah, you mischievous child,” she said. “You make fun of all I say. I will send a note to Mr. Osborne to-night, for I told him I should have to speak to you first. You will make him very happy, Dora, and you will make somebody else happier. Shall we turn?”
CHAPTER III.
THE garden front of Grote faced southeast, and thus, though all day the broad paved walk in front of it had been grilled by the burning of the August sun, the shadow of the house itself had spread over it like an incoming tide of dark clear water before tea time, and at this moment three footmen were engaged in laying the table for that meal, while the fourth, as a matter of fact, was talking to the stillroom maid under pretence of “seeing to” the urn. They were all in the famous Osborne livery, which was rather gorgeous and of the waspish scheme of colour. There were, it may be remarked, only four of them, because Mr. Osborne was still in London, roughing it, so his wife was afraid, with a kitchen-maid for cook, and only two footmen besides his own man, for Parliamentary business had kept him there for a few days after Mrs. Osborne had left to get things in order at Grote. But he was expected down this afternoon for a couple of nights before he went North, and the six footmen would shine together like evening stars. “Company” also, though not in large numbers, were also arriving that evening, among whom were Lady Austell, her son, and Dora. The latter was now formally and publicly engaged to Claude.
The house was three-storied, built in the Jacobean style of brick and stone with small-paned windows, and the brick had mellowed to that russet red which is as indescribable as it is inimitable. A door opened from the long gallery inside, which was panelled and hung with portraits—inalienable, luckily, or Austell would have got rid of them long ago—onto this broad-paved walk that ran from end to end of the house. On the other side of it was the famous yew hedge with square doors cut in it, through which were seen glimpses of the flower garden and long riband bed below, and the top of this hedge grew the grotesque shapes of birds. A flight of stone steps led down into the formal flower garden below, which was bordered on the far side by the long riband bed. Below that again two big herbaceous borders stretched away toward the lake, on the far side of which there rose from the edge of the water the great rhododendron thickets. To right and left lay the park, full of noble timber, which climbed up to the top of the hill opposite. Across this ran the road from the station, which skirted the lake on its eastern side, and passing by the flower garden came up to what Mrs. Osborne called “the carriage sweep” on the other side of the house, from which two wings projected, so that the carriage sweep was really the interior of a three-sided quadrangle.
The warning hoot of an approaching motor caused one of the footmen to disappear into the house with some alacrity, and a few minutes afterward Mr. Osborne emerged from the door into the gallery. He still wore London clothes, dark gray trousers and a black frock coat and waistcoat, for he had driven straight from the House of Commons to Victoria, but he had picked up a Panama hat in the hall, and had substituted it for his silk hat.
“And tell your missus I’ve come,” he observed to one of the wasps.
He sat down in a creaking basket-chair for a few moments, “to rest and cool,” as he expressed it to himself, and looked about him with extreme satisfaction. His big high-coloured face was capable of expressing an immense amount of contentment, and though from time to time he carried a large coloured handkerchief to his face, and mopped his streaming forehead with a whistled “Whew!” at the heat, so superficial a cause of discomfort could not disturb his intense satisfaction with life. Things had prospered amazingly with him and his: he was thoroughly contented with the doings of destiny.