He drank a cup of tea, and listened to Lady Selina, who talked in the grand manner, investing even weather conditions with a sort of aristocratic gloss. All the Danecourts talked like this when they wished to suppress feeling and emotion. Without a taint of affectation, Lady Selina conveyed the impression that she towered above a crumbling world. Marie Antoinette must have raised to heaven just such a dignified head when she rode on a tumbril through the streets of Paris to the place of execution. Lady Selina quoted her brother:
“Our order is doomed. Win or lose, this dreadful war means a débâcle for us.”
Wilverley assured her that he took a less gloomy view. Lady Selina smiled frostily.
“Saltaire has lost his butler, who has been with him five-and-twenty years. Two parlourmaids have taken his place. One wears a bow upon her tousled head; she refuses to wear a proper cap. My poor brother said to me: ‘Selina, this is the beginning of the end.’ I agreed with him.”
After tea, when Wilverley was wondering how he could discreetly justify Mrs. Roden’s faith in him as a man, Lady Selina said suavely:
“I daresay you will like to smoke your cigarette in the garden. A year ago it was in full beauty. To-day——! Well—a wilderness. I can’t bear to walk in it. Cicely will show you the roses. I must attack my neglected correspondence.”
“I should like to see the roses,” said Wilverley.
Cicely and he wandered into the garden, which looked, so Wilverley thought, very much as usual. At the Court he had discovered, not without amusement, that a sadly diminished staff, if put to it, can achieve remarkable results. Gazing about him, he said genially:
“Your mother exaggerates a little. I see no signs of a wilderness.”
Cicely replied quickly: