He accepted the position calmly enough, but Grace knew he was very much upset by Mark’s attitude.
Both she and Val had cared most warmly for their cousin, and the estrangement was a sorrow to them. However, it was no use crying over spilled milk, and Grace determined to go on her way as cheerfully as possible.
The young Lady Wentworth had established herself at Sunstead very soon after her marriage, and this fact cut Grace adrift from her customary visit to her grandmother, for it was not possible to go to the big house when neither its master nor mistress desired her presence.
Grace had been amazed by Christina’s beauty the first time she had seen her driving in the quaint old Dynechester streets.
“I begin to understand Mark’s infatuation now, Val,” she told her brother, when she had returned home. “Lady Wentworth is not merely pretty, she is positively lovely! I never saw a more delicate type of beauty.”
Val had only smiled.
“Let us hope she will make the boy happy,” he had answered, and Grace had said no more.
She had grown accustomed to seeing Christina in the weeks that followed, and sometimes her eyes met, and were held for an instant by Lady Wentworth’s eyes. In such a moment Grace told herself quietly that the dislike Mark’s wife undoubtedly lavished upon Val was extended to herself also.
She had no desire to be friendly with Christina, save only so far as she might have been given ingress to the old, ailing woman up at Sunstead, who missed, she knew well, the constant visits she had been wont to pay.
Grace would also have felt happier had she not remembered the quarrel with Mark.