To Paul's horror, the Anglo-Indian trio came to stay at Esdaile, and he was appointed to take Miss Carnaby in to dinner on the night of her arrival. He disliked all he had heard of the girl, and he made up his mind to snub her as much as was compatible with good manners, and not to allow her to fall into the error of imagining for one moment that he would ever be dragged captive at her chariot-wheels.
The Farley party had arrived only just in time to dress; and the drawing-room was already half full of county magnates and their attendant wives, when Sir Benjamin and his two ladies came in.
Sir Benjamin was short and stout, and her ladyship was tall and thin; she evidently possessed the remains of striking beauty, which he—as evidently—did not. Isabel followed them with an air of perfect assurance that somehow irritated Paul; she really was not good-looking enough to give herself such airs, he thought; for he was as yet too unlearned to know that her gown was fresh from Paris, and was the very acme of the prevailing fashion.
"Let me present you to Miss Carnaby," said Lady Esdaile's voice. "Isabel, this is Mr. Seaton, who will take you in to dinner."
Paul prepared himself to meet a fellow-Greek, and to return Miss Carnaby's bow as superciliously as she made it; but he was completely taken aback when she held out a friendly little ungloved hand, saying: "I'm so awfully pleased to meet you, Mr. Seaton! Dick tells me that you can blow birds' eggs better than any man he knows; and a past-master in any art is always interesting to me."
"It is very kind of you to say so, Miss Carnaby." Paul was still a little stiff. He certainly had some excuse for feeling annoyed; he had armed himself to rebuff airs and graces, and here was the most natural girl he had ever met in his life. He felt that even Joanna and Alice would seem affected beside her, she was so perfectly at her ease.
"I'm so glad you are taking me in to dinner," she continued, as the whole party trooped dining-room-wards; "all the other men in the room are so old. And I'm dreadfully tired of going in to dinner with my extreme seniors. Would you believe it? One week—since we came home—the united ages of the men who took me in to dinner amounted to three hundred. I looked in Debrett, and added them up."
Paul thawed sufficiently to smile. "That was rather rough on you!"
"It was simply unbearable. They would explain things to me, and try to instruct me. And they ran to anecdotes and statistics at the slightest provocation. One told me of all the reductions in rent he'd made to his tenants during the last twenty years; and another gave me such an exhaustive description of every attack of gout he'd ever suffered, that I could write a biography of that man's big toe."
"Nevertheless I hope you showed a teachable spirit in listening to them."