LORD ARROWMOUNT and Randolph wrote to Lady Barnstaple that they would arrive at the Abbey on the eleventh; Mrs. Montgomery was indisposed, but hoped to come a week later with Lady Arrowmount. The Gearys wrote from Paris to expect them any time during August.
Lee laughed as Lady Barnstaple tossed her back Coralie’s letter with a sharp exclamation.
“They are both spoiled children, you know, and Ned has ignored social obligations all his life.”
“He can’t take any liberties with me if I am an American—or was.”
“Oh, you’re quite English.”
Lee and her mother-in-law exchanged hooded sarcasms occasionally, but on the whole were excellent acquaintances. Lady Barnstaple had never paid a second visit to the tower, and was ignorant of her daughter-in-law’s depredations; no other excuse for a quarrel had occurred. Lee having made up her mind to accept “Emmy”—there being no alternative—veiled her with philosophy, and saw as little of her as possible. Lady Barnstaple forgave the younger woman her beauty, as, according to her lights, it might as well have blossomed in Sahara; and she uneasily respected the obvious will beneath that lovely exterior, and frankly admired Lee’s genius for dress.
On the evening of the eleventh Lee selected her gown with unusual care. During the past three years she had dressed for no man but her husband, who occasionally informed her that she always looked exactly the same to him no matter what she had on, and she had been as indifferent to the admiring glances of other men as a beautiful woman can be. She had not indulged in so much as a dinner flirtation, and had kept her ideal of matrimonial bliss so close to her eyes that she had occasionally received a hint of myopic dangers and a benumbing of certain mental faculties. Her glance, rising on the wing of a phlegmatic fancy, sometimes strayed to the right or left of the steel track she paced, but it returned submissively; and the only alteration in her face was a slightly accentuated determination in the curves of her mouth. During the last six months she had been conscious of a certain restiveness, but had refused to analyse it.
It was quite natural to dress for Randolph, for he was an old and valued friend; and it was certainly a pleasure to dress for him, for he appreciated every detail and his taste was exquisite. She therefore selected the sort of gown in which he had always most admired her, a black gauze made with the dashing simplicity which suited her so well.
He would arrive about five. She sent him word to dress early and come to the tower. She knew that he would doubtless be detained by Cecil in the library for a time, but she was in her boudoir before seven. Her flutter of excitement was very agreeable. As it trembled along her nerves it brought with it an admitted desire for a whole series of sudden and brilliant changes. She wished that Randolph had come straight from California, for she could have fancied the wild winds of the Pacific blowing about him. She had learned to keep California out of her mind for many months at a time, but to-night as she stood in her tower looking through the narrow ancient window on the calm beauty of the English landscape, she shook with homesickness for that land which seemed to have all space just above it, and as many moods and features as the imagination of Byron. The sudden nostalgia was as much of the body as of the spirit. Her very veins seemed full of tears; in her brain was a distinct sensation of nausea. She was a child of the redwoods, not of the landscape garden.
Randolph came up the stair with a slower step than of old, but with as light a foot. Lee was conventional at once.