“Bless the man! Why couldn’t you say so at once? I’ll see Mr. Goodrich here.”
Stimson withdrew. Lady Selina returned to her desk and sat down. Perhaps she wished to impress her parson, an old friend, that she was busy. Beholding the lady of the manor engrossed in multifarious duties, Mr. Goodrich might consider himself courteously admonished. None the less, she received him with a gracious smile, and expressed herself as glad to see him. The parson said genially:
“A charming day for our little fête.”
As he sat down near her, Lady Selina eyed him interrogatively, divining something unpleasant. She was well aware that her general staff, so to speak, were self-trained in the art of what is now called “camouflage.” She had learnt to distrust the smiles of others, knowing well that her own smiles often served to disguise her feelings.
Mr. Goodrich settled himself comfortably in his chair, and crossed a pair of shapely legs which in his opinion ought to wear gaiters, archdiaconal if not episcopal. He, too, like the lady of the manor, presented a plump and prosperous exterior to a changing and hypercritical world. From his relaxed, easy attitude one might guess that this was not a soldier of the church militant, the more robust physically because, perhaps, he habitually exercised his body instead of his mind, an indefatigable walker and talker rather than a thinker. He looked his best, indeed, from the back of a fat cob, not in the pulpit or at the lectern, although his perfectly tied white cravat was austerely clerical. Lady Selina wasted no time:
“You have something disagreeable to tell me?”
“No, no. Disagreeable is too strong a word. Worrying—m’yes. I dislike being appealed to in such matters.”
“In what matters, my dear friend?”
“I went for a ride this morning, and—a—happened to look in upon old Ephraim Exton. He asked me to speak to you, and the day being so—a—propitious, I was beguiled against my better judgment into saying I would.”
His slight hesitations did not annoy Lady Selina. She accepted them as homage, a soaping of the ways, a desire upon the part of her staff to “spare” their chief anything approximating to a shock. But she said humorously: