“There is nothing odd in it; any sensible man must say it!”
She laughed, but said, “No, you are unjust! I have never yet done the least harm to anyone! It may be that with regard to Charles my stratagems may not succeed; in your case I am convinced they must! That may well content us. Poor Cecy! Only conceive how dreadful to be obliged to marry Augustus and to spend the rest of one’s life listening to his poems!”
This aspect of the situation struck Lord Charlbury so forcibly that he was smitten to silence. He said nothing of deserting Sophy when they stopped at the next pike, but appeared to be resigned to his fate.
Lacy Manor, which lay a little way off the turnpike road, was an Elizabethan house, considerably added to in succeeding generations, but still retaining much of its original beauty. It was reached by an avenue of noble trees and had once been set among well-tended formal gardens. These, through the circumstance of Sir Horace’s being not only an absentee but also a careless landlord, had become overgrown of late years, so that the shrubbery was indistinguishable from the wilderness, and unpruned rose bushes rioted at will in unweeded flower beds. The sky had been overcast all day, but a fitful ray of sunlight, penetrating the lowering clouds, showed the mullioned windows of the house much in need of cleaning. A trail of smoke issued from one chimney, the only observable sign that the house was still inhabited. Sophy, alighting from the chaise, looked about her critically, while Charlbury tugged at the iron bellpull beside the front door.
“Everything seems to be in shocking disorder!” she observed. “I must tell Sir Horace that it will not do! He should not neglect the house in this way. There is work here for an army of gardeners! He never liked the place, you know. I have sometimes wondered if it was because my mother died here.” Lord Charlbury made a sympathetic sound in his throat, but Sophy continued cheerfully. “But I daresay it is only because he is shockingly indolent! Ring the bell again, Charlbury!”
After a prolonged interval, they heard the sound of footsteps within the house, to be followed immediately by the scrape of bolts being drawn back, and the clank of a chain removed from the door.
“I am reconciled, Sophy!” announced Charlbury. “Never did I hope to find myself existing between the covers of a library novel! Will there be cobwebs and a skeleton under the stairs?”
“I fear not, but only think how delightful if there should be!” she retorted. She added, as the door was opened, and a surprised face appeared in the aperture, “Good day, Clavering. Yes, it is I indeed, and I have come home to see how you and Mathilda go on!”
The retainer, a spare man with grizzled locks and a bent back, peered at her for a moment before gasping, “Miss Sophy! Lor’, miss, if we’d thought you was coming! Such a turn as it give me, to hear the bell a-pealing! Here, Matty! Matty, I say! it’s Miss Sophy!”
A female form, as stout as his was lean, appeared in the background, uttering distressful sounds, and trying to untie the strings of a grimy apron. Much flustered, Mrs. Clavering begged her young mistress to step into the house and to excuse the disorder everywhere. They had had no warning of her advent. The master had said he would take order when he returned from foreign parts. She doubted whether there was as much as a pinch of tea in the house. If she had but known of Miss Sophy’s intention to visit them, she would have had the chimney’s swept and the best parlor cleaned and taken out of Holland covers.