Presently the Planter ladies descended. It was obvious that the "rest" they were credited with having required was an euphony for elaborate toilette. The mother's clothes became her years, but the daughter was so nobly beautiful that she should have been simply dressed. Grace, in her tight-fitting tweed, felt no feminine envy for the gold-braided waistcoat and velvet jacket, trimmed with blue fox, which the girl wore; here, in the country, this splendor was singularly out of place; even in the city it would have seemed to English ideas a little oppressive on one so young. But the smile on that beautiful and by no means weak face was so captivating that "the first instalment of her," as Grace afterwards expressed it, could not fail to please.
"I am so glad to meet you in the country," she said, as she sat down on the sofa next to Grace. "One knows people so much better in the country. Why would you not come to Tuxedo, when Jem Gunning asked us to meet you? We had such a good time. But it would have been ever so much better if you had come."
"It is very kind of you to say that, but I never promised Mr. Gunning to go to Tuxedo. I should have been very glad to have met you, but—I am sure this is much nicer than Tuxedo."
"Of course it is. Brackly is just like an English house, isn't it?"
"Yes, and that, I see, is a compliment in your eyes."
"I should think so! I love England. Do you know Wraxford? No? or Binly? This reminded me a little of Binly."
"I should have thought the duke had too many places for any of them to look as much lived in as this does. That is the advantage of having only one home."
Miss Planter looked puzzled for an instant—not longer.
"If you fill your house full of friends all the time, it will soon get to look lived in, I think. You in England understand all the amusements of country life so well. We have no country life, no hunting and shooting for the men, to take them away from business; so, if we do go to the country, it's awfully slow, and we never remain long."
"You have no interests, I suppose? Perhaps it requires an education to feel an interest in a village—in the school—in all the little schemes that arise for the welfare of the poor, in the cutting of trees, and irrigation of the land, and gardening, and beautifying your property. Those who really love country life have no end of interests and amusements, independent of society."