“No, no such thing. Will you not be seated? The coffee will be brought in directly.”
She took her place at the table, feeling shy, and glad of the butler’s presence in the room, which made it impossible for the conversation to go beyond the commonplace. While Carlyon exchanged views with John on the probable nature of the weather, she took covert stock of him. He proved, when seen in the light of day, to be quite as personable a man as she had fancied him to be. Without being precisely handsome, his features were good, his carriage easy, and his shoulders, under a well-cut coat of superfine cloth, very broad. He was dressed with neatness and propriety, and although he wore breeches and top boots in preference to the pantaloons and hessians favored by town dwellers, there was no suggestion in his appearance of the slovenly country squire. His brother John was similarly neat; but the high shirt collar affected by Nicky, and his complicated cravat, indicated to Elinor’s experienced eye an incipient dandyism. That Nicky’s attire had been the subject of argument soon became apparent, for at the first opportunity he said in a contumacious tone, “I do not see how I should well wear mourning for Eustace. I mean, when you consider—”
“I did not say you should wear mourning,” interrupted John. “But that waistcoat you have on is the outside of enough!”
“Let me tell you,” said Nicky indignantly, “that this fashion in waistcoats is all the crack up at Oxford!”
“I dare say it may be, but you are not, more shame to you, up at Oxford at this present, and it would be grossly improper for you to be going about the countryside, with our cousin but just dead, in a cherry-striped waistcoat.”
“Ned, do you think so?” Nicky said, turning in appeal to Carlyon.
“Yes, or at any other time,” responded his mentor unfeelingly.
Nicky subsided, with a sotto voce animadversion on old-fashioned prejudice, and applied himself to a formidable plateful of cold roast sirloin. Carlyon signed to the butler to leave the room, and when he had done so, smiled faintly at Elinor and said, “Well, now, Mrs. Cheviot, we have to consider what is next to be done.”
“I do wish you will not call me by that name!” she said.
“I am afraid you will have to accustom yourself to being called by it,” he replied.