“But how could he help it? You are all so jolly to him.”
“Yes; some of us are very hospitable,” and the Doña’s eyes rested for a moment on Teresa’s back; “still, one would have thought he might have recovered from his influenza by now.”
CHAPTER VIII
1
Anna and Jasper came to Plasencia for their Easter holidays, and towards the end of April Concha and Rory got back from Scotland. It was the first time Teresa had seen them together since their engagement, and their relationship was so comfortable and intimate that, to her, it almost smacked of incest.
As to the Doña, the presence of Rory in the flesh seemed to undo all the reconciliatory work of the past two months, and her attitude once more became uncompromising, her heart bitter and heavy.
Harry and Arnold came down for the last “week-end” in April; so they were now quite a big party again, and Teresa did not see so much of David.
It was dear that Concha was bursting with the glories of Drumsheugh; but she had no one to tell them to; the Doña and Teresa were out of the question, and Arnold had sulked with her ever since her engagement. However, one afternoon when they were sitting in the loggia, she could keep it in no longer: “I simply love Drumsheugh,” she began; Arnold immediately started talking to Harry, but to her surprise she found Teresa clearly prepared to listen sympathetically. “It isn’t a ‘stately home of England’ sort of thing, you know, but square and plain and solid, and full of solid Victorian furniture; and the portraits aren’t ruffles and armour and that sort of thing, but eighteenth-century-judges-sort-of-people. There’s a perfectly divine Raeburn of Rory’s great-great-grandmother playing ring-o’-roses with her children. It’s altogether very eighteenth century ... the sort of house one can imagine Dr. Johnson staying in, when he was in Scotland, and very much enjoying the claret and library. And there’s no ‘culture’ about it—it’s filled with cases of stuffed birds, and stuffed foxes and things....”