That room, with its three windows set in thick frames, with deep window-seats beneath, had been Mrs. Falconer's pride. As she looked round now, the furniture seemed dull, and the whole aspect of things changed.
"Yes," she said, sadly, "yes, you are right, Joyce; this room is not fit to sit down in; we will go to our own sitting room, if his lordship will follow me."
The whole party adjourned there, and Piers, with unusual forethought, had already ordered a tray to be brought in; for it was always en règle in country houses in those days to offer refreshment of wine and cake, as calls were paid early, just as afternoon tea is brought in now for visitors later in the day.
Mrs. Arundel left the Bishop to talk to Mrs. Falconer, and Gratian won Piers' heart by professing the deepest interest in his drawer full of birds' eggs, which happened to be opened. That was one of Gratian's strongest weapons; she took, or appeared to take, an interest in everybody's particular hobby, and yet she was listening with one ear to every word that passed between Mrs. Arundel and Joyce. Poor Piers was quite unconscious that he had not her whole attention. When Mr. Law joined the discussion she withdrew and said to Joyce, "I should like to see the grounds, would you show me round." Piers wondered at her abrupt departure from the contemplation of the wren's eggs, and his animated story of the way the little wrens huddle together in a nest in the winter, under ground, in a hedge facing south, and come out to try the air in the first warm days in February, retiring again if it is too cold for them.
Joyce led the way, thankful to see how much more her mother looked like herself, as she told to the sympathetic ear of the Bishop the story of her grief.
Gratian took pains to suit herself to her company; she always did. She linked her arm through Joyce's, and talked in a low voice, instead of her wonted high pitched rattle. She told her how grieved she felt for her; she could easily imagine what such a sorrow must be; for she, a "poor orphan" herself, could indeed sympathise with her.
So she talked, as they paced the gravel walk under the sunny south wall of the old-fashioned garden, where the arms of a huge pear-tree were still heavily laden with brown fruit, and where bushes of pale lilac, Michaelmas daisies, and lavender, still attracted a number of late bees and errant wasps, who, like all the rest of the world, found it hard to believe that this was the November sunshine of a short winter's day, and not the long drawn out heat of July.
"I should like to know more of you; to see more," Gratian was saying. "Of course, I expected you were charming from what Gilbert told me. Gilbert and I are great friends; he tells me everything."
A scarcely perceptible recoil, in the little figure by her side, was not lost on Gratian.
"Yes," she said, "he is a dear boy—a little spoiled by the notions he has taken up lately; but they are spreading everywhere. The Cambridge men are even worse than the Oxford men. However, I won't quarrel with Gilbert about that, and I can take a little preachment from him. Aunt Bella is pleased with anything Gilbert says or does; and as to Maythorne——"