'It's just my idea of the English country house,' she said; 'it's just ancestral. Why, Lewis might go and establish his office right here under these trees, and give Vanderbilt fits, as he did last year, and the trees wouldn't care. That's what I've just lain awake and coveted till three in the morning. Why, I was at Windsor last week, and I assure you Windsor looks like a mushroom beside this. It's just English. Lord Bolton, however you could let Lewis have it I can't think. Come and sit by me, and pay me some more compliments. Why, it tickles me to death to sit here and talk to you. I think you're just lovely.'
Gallio rose obediently.
'Tact, too,' he observed to Mrs. Massington, as he turned to comply with Mrs. Palmer's frank and direct request.
In fact, for the time things could not have been worse, and Mrs. Palmer's voluble shrillness, bawling all sorts of things which were neither wicked nor stupid nor anything objectionable, except that they were simply impossible, at Gallio, who sat beside her, and encouraged her by his exquisite courtliness of manner into imagining that she was being the most brilliant success, was too much for the nerves of some of the English section, who strolled away about the lawn with fine deliberation, and carefully abstained from any comment. But in process of time Amelie took her mother away to see her room, and Gallio, suave to the last, made her his best bow, as she declared for the twentieth time that she considered him the loveliest man she had ever met. Bertie had strolled away with Charlie and Sybil Massington, feeling that in its small way the situation was unbearable. It was one of the hideous, bitter little comedies of life, where everyone is ridiculous, yet it is impossible to laugh for fear of crying. He knew so well how Mrs. Palmer felt, how Gallio felt, how he himself felt, and he was afraid he knew how Amelie felt.
Sybil had much to say.
'It is quite like a fairy-story, Bertie. Here are Charlie and I—the poor young man who proposed to drop into an early grave, and who proposed to me instead, who has now no more idea of dropping into a grave than I have—and here are you and Amelie, with Molesworth once more your home. Bertie, if you hadn't fallen in love with Amelie, you would have argued yourself the most obtuse young man in the world. Why she fell in love with you is harder to say. She has got extraordinary charm; I felt it as soon as I saw her. You were in luck when you went a-wooing. So were you, Charlie—why didn't you say that?'
'You really didn't give me much time,' said Charlie in self-justification.
'No, that's true. Bertie, what fun we had in Long Island! Really, that time was most amusing. And we all meet again here—all but Mrs. Emsworth, that is to say. By the way, she has come back; she is staying somewhere in the neighbourhood. Did her tour end as successfully as it began?'
'She wrote to me just before my marriage saying she was getting quite rich,' said Bertie, wincing a little.
'How nice! I wish I was. Charlie, they are all rich except you and me. Never mind; we will stay with them all a great deal, which will be charming for them. And the Palmers' house in London—have you seen it? Really, it is magnificent. Who did it? Mrs. Palmer or her husband? It can't have been done by a firm; the taste is too individual, too certain.'