She could not, however, extract anything definite from the little cluster of discomforts; old Lady Carloes and Lord Crewner, a young thing that Lord Crewner had brought with him, and her brother Richard were all waiting for tea, and floods of conversation instantly covered Lady Adela's poor mind and drowned it.
The Long Drawing-room, where they now were, was long and narrow, with two large open fireplaces, a great deal of old furniture rather faded and very handsome, silver that gleamed against the dark wall-paper, one big portrait of the Duchess, painted by Sargent twenty years ago, and high windows shut off now by heavy dark green curtains.
The Duchess, it was understood, did not approve of electric light and the house therefore disdained it. Parts of the room were lighted by candles placed in heavy old silver candlesticks. Round the fireplace at the farther end of the light shone and glittered; there the tea-tables stood, and round about them the company was gathered.
The rest of the room, hung in dark shadow, stretched into black depths, lit only now and again by the gleam of silver or glass as the light of the more distant fire flashed and fell.
The voices, the clatter of the tea-things, these sounds seemed to be echoed by the darker depths of the farther stretches of the room.
Lady Carlos was eighty, extremely vigorous, and believed in bright colours. She was dressed now in purple, and wore a hat with a large white feather. Her figure was bunched into a kind of bundle, so that her waist was too near her bosom and her bosom too near her chin and her chin too near her forehead.
It was as though some spiteful person had pressed all of her too closely together. But this very shapelessness added to her undoubted amiability; her face was fat and smiling, her hair white and untidy, and she maintained her dignity in spite of her figure. Nobody knew anything with certainty as to her income, but she was charitable, and ran a little house in Charles Street with a great deal of ceremony and hospitality. Her husband had long been dead and her two daughters had long been married, so that she was happy and independent. Many people considered her tiresome because her curiosity was insatiable and her discretion open to question, yet she was a staunch Beaminster adherent, an old friend of the Duchess, and saw both this world and the next in the proper Beaminster light.
Lady Adela depended on her a good deal, at certain times: she had forseen that the old lady would come to-day; she had heard of course of Frank Breton's arrival in town, she would demand every detail; Lady Adela knew that the account that she gave to Lady Carloes would be the account that the town would receive.
By the fire Lord Richard, Lord Crewner and the nondescript young man were talking together. Lady Adela caught fragments. "But of course Dilchester is incautious—when was he anything else? What these fellows need——"
That was her brother.