“Under the unhappy circumstances, I could not expect Mr. Grimshaw to waste his undoubted talents and energies in Upworthy.”
Cicely said hastily:
“He seemed to ask for—for our opinion, and of course I replied that he would do what seemed right.”
Lady Selina smiled maternally:
“Very proper, my dear. And Dr. Pawley is so much stronger. Really, he doesn’t need a partner now.”
She sipped her tea, hardly missing the cream. Cicely observed with irrelevance:
“I often wonder why Dr. Pawley never married.”
“Ah, well, I could enlighten you, child, about that.”
“Do, please!”
Whereupon Lady Selina unfolded a romantic tale with a gusto in the telling of it not wasted upon her listener. Pawley was presented as a young, ardent man, whimsical, attractive, and something of a cavalier. As a rider to hounds, he had won the friendship of the late Squire of Upworthy. Cicely was well aware of this, a fact that tickled her humour. With a full appreciation of the part played by fox-hunting in the making of the nation, she learnt also, not with surprise, that a bold horseman had captivated the interest of a daughter of the county, now a rotund matron, the wife of a baronet who lived a dozen miles away. Lady Selina was describing vividly, with corroborative detail, the process of transmuting mere interest into love, when Cicely interjected rather sharply: