“Try to walk a steep moor with him and you’ll see. If that’s not sufficient, take the same butt with him when the grouse are coming over.”
Suddenly she straightened herself, dropping her foot from the iron and flinging the cigarette into the fire, as a gray-haired lady entered the hall. She had been a beauty years ago and now her fragility emphasized the fineness of her features and the clear pallor of her skin. She was dressed in a thin black fabric, and her beautifully shaped hands gleamed unusually white against its somber folds.
“Where’s Clarence?” she asked the group collectively, in a voice that was singularly clear and penetrative. “I haven’t seen him for the last half-hour.”
One of the men immediately went in search of him, and the lady crossed the hall to where Millicent Gladwyne was sitting, for the time being alone. Millicent had noticed Bella’s sudden change of demeanor upon her hostess’s entrance, with something between amusement and faint disgust. Mrs. Gladwyne was what Bella would have called early-Victorian in her views, and she would occasionally have been disturbed by the conversation of some of her son’s guests, had she not been a little deaf.
“Sitting quiet?” she said to Millicent, who was a favorite of hers; and her voice carried farther than she was aware of as she continued: “I heard the laughter and it brought me down, though I want to tell Clarence something. I like to see bright faces; but the times have changed since I was young. We were a little more reserved and not so noisy then.”
“A dear old thing! It’s a pity she’s quite so antediluvian,” Bella remarked to a man at her side.
“Isn’t that the natural penalty of being a dear old thing?” laughed her companion. “There’s no doubt we have progressed pretty rapidly of late.”
Clarence appeared shortly after this and was gently chidden by his mother for going out without his hat, because the autumn nights were getting chilly. A few minutes later, footsteps became audible outside the open door and Nasmyth entered the hall with Lisle. It was spacious and indifferently lighted; the others, standing near the hostess, concealed her, and Lisle stopped for a word with Bella. Then Nasmyth noticed Mrs. Gladwyne and called to his companion.
“This way, Vernon.”
Clarence swung round with a start and cast a swift glance at the stranger, and Millicent wondered why his face set hard; but the next moment Nasmyth led up the Canadian and presented him. Mrs. Gladwyne had risen and Lisle made a little respectful inclination over the delicate hand she held out. Age had but slightly spoiled her beauty; she had still a striking presence, and a manner in which a trace of stateliness was counterbalanced by gentle good-humor. Lisle was strongly impressed, but, as Millicent noticed, he betrayed no awkwardness.