“She certainly is a stunning-looking woman,” said Hal, as Honora passed into the drawing-room, “but she’s a whole rattlesnake, and no mistake. I’ve never seen her strike real hard yet; she merely spits occasionally, and always in that amiable way. You can imagine how subtle she is, and what a dangerous force such self-control is. I shall never understand how she failed to get Bev.”
“Perhaps, as May suggests, she didn’t want him.”
“Oh, didn’t she! Just wait! you’ll hear from her yet. There’s the whistle. The train’ll be here in three minutes. Let us group ourselves gracefully under Peele the First.”
They went into the large white drawing-room, whose old-fashioned woodwork was as it had been nearly three hundred years ago, even to the heavy shutters over the small-paned windows. The ceiling was fretted with floral designs, executed in papier mâché, surrounding a bas relief of “our well beloved Whyte Peele,” who had received the grant of these many acres from James the First. All the woodwork was painted white, and carved. The furniture, modern, but of colonial design, was upholstered in pale pink and blue.
Beyond a side hall was a long dining-room panelled to the ceiling in oak, and hung on all sides with dead and living Peeles. The carved oaken table was spread with the light unsubstantial feast of the modern time. Adjoining the dining-room were two small reception-rooms looking upon the terrace at the back of the rambling old house. In the middle of this hall, under the carved twisted stair, was a round enclosure whose door opened upon a well, from whence a secret passage led to the river.
Mrs. Peele swept across the hall from the dining-room, and raising her lorgnette, considered Patience.
“You look very well,” she said, coldly. “Don’t get nervous, please; it is the one thing for which people have no toleration. Where is Beverly?”
“He has gone for a drive. You know he does not like entertainments.” Patience’s nerves were muttering, and her mother-in-law’s admonition was not of the nature of balm.
Mrs. Peele raised her brows. “It is odd that a bride should have so little influence over her husband,” she remarked; and Patience was now in that equable frame of mind which carries one through the severe ordeals of life.
How she did live through that ordeal of introduction to some five hundred people she never knew. Fortunately, all but the neighbours arrived on the special train which had been sent for them, and there was little for her to do but smile and bend her head as Mrs. Peele named her new daughter-in-law to her guests.