Arabella was a little doubtful on this score herself, but as it was now too late to draw back she stifled her misgivings, and said stoutly that she was persuaded there could be no objection. Finding a brush and comb laid out on the dressing-table, she began to tidy her rather tumbled locks.
“They are most gentlemanlike,” said Miss Blackburn, deriving comfort from this circumstance. “Of the first rank of fashion, I daresay. They will be here for the hunting, depend upon it: I collect this is a hunting-box,”
“A hunting-box!” exclaimed Arabella, awed. “Is it not very large and grand, ma’am, to be that?”
“Oh, no, my dear! Quite a small house! The Tewkesburys, whose sweet children I was engaged to instruct before I removed to Mrs. Caterham’s establishment, had one much larger, I assure you. This is the Melton country, you must know.”
“Good heavens, are they Melton men, then? Oh, how much I wish Bertram could be here! What I shall have to tell him! I think it is Mr. Beaumaris who owns the house: I wonder who the other is? I thought when I first saw him he could not be quite the thing, for that striped waistcoat, you know, and that spotted handkerchief he wears instead of a cravat makes him look like a groom, or some such thing. But when he spoke, of course I knew he was not a vulgar person at all.”
Miss Blackburn, feeling for once in her life pleasantly superior, gave a titter of laughter, and said pityingly: “Oh, dear me no, Miss Tallant! You will find a great many young gentleman of fashion wearing much odder clothes than that! It is what Mr. Geoffrey Tewkesbury—a very modish young man!—used to call all the crack! ” She added pensively: “But I must confess that I do not care for it myself, and nor did dear Mrs. Tewkesbury. My notion of a true gentleman is someone like Mr. Beaumaris!”
Arabella dragged the comb ruthlessly through a tangle. “ I thought him a very proud, reserved man!” she declared. “And not at all hospitable!” she added.
“Oh, no, how can you say so? How very kind and obliging it was of him to place me in the best place, so near the fire! Delightful manners! nothing high in them at all! I was quite overcome by his condescension!”
It was evident to Arabella that she and Miss Blackburn regarded their host through two very different pairs of spectacles. She preserved an unconvinced silence, and as soon as Miss Blackburn had finished prinking her crimped gray locks at the mirror, suggested that they should go downstairs again. Accordingly they left the room, and crossed the upper hall to the head of the stairway. Mr. Beaumaris’s fancy had led him to carpet his stairs, a luxury which Miss Blackburn indicated to her charge with one pointing finger and a most expressive glance.
Across the lower hall, the door into the library stood ajar. Lord Fleetwood’s voice, speaking in rallying tones, assailed the ladies’ ears. “I swear you are incorrigible!” said his lordship. The loveliest of creatures drops into your lap, like a veritable honey-fall, and you behave as though a gull-groper had forced his way into your house!”