“I don’t think I can stand this much longer,” said Mr Mountchesney, the son-in-law of Lord de Mowbray, to his wife, as he stood before the empty fire-place with his back to the mantelpiece and his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat. “This living in the country in August bores me to extinction. I think we will go to Baden, Joan.”
“But papa is so anxious, dearest Alfred, that we should remain here at present and see the neighbours a little.”
“I might be induced to remain here to please your father, but as for your neighbours I have seen quite enough of them. They are not a sort of people that I ever met before, or that I wish to meet again. I do not know what to say to them, nor can I annex an idea to what they say to me. Heigho! certainly the country in August is a thing of which no one who has not tried it has the most remote conception.”
“But you always used to say you doted on the country, Alfred,” said Lady Joan in a tone of tender reproach.
“So I do; I never was happier than when I was at Melton, and even enjoyed the country in August when I was on the Moors.”
“But I cannot well go to Melton,” said Lady Joan.
“I don’t see why you can’t. Mrs Shelldrake goes with her husband to Melton, and so does Lady Di with Barham; and a very pleasant life it is.”
“Well, at any rate we cannot go to Melton now,” said Lady Joan mortified; “and it is impossible for me to go to the Moors.”
“No, but I could go,” said Mr Mountchesney, “and leave you here. I might have gone with Eugene de Vere and Milford and Fitz-heron. They wanted me very much. What a capital party it would have been, and what capital sport we should have had! And I need not have been away for more than a month or perhaps six weeks, and I could have written to you every day and all that sort of thing.”
Lady Joan sighed and affected to recur to the opened volume which during this conversation she had held in her hand.