Even with a weight-for-age allowance for the tact, the charm, and the urbanity of one of London’s leading Constitutional hostesses, it would be idle to speak of the evening as a great success. The good old Mater did all that a brave woman and a devoted mother could have done in the circumstances, but such was the atmospheric pressure that at last she was obliged to ask the butler whether anything had gone wrong with the ventilator of the new fire grate, which she had always viewed with suspicion from the moment it had been put in.
In the withdrawing-room the frost grew worse.
“I must really have my cloak,” said the mother of the heir.
Vain to stir the fire; nought could uncongeal the atmosphere. No, it was not one of your successes, Mater; no use pretending, is it? Better face the facts, but you are not to blame, my dear. From the first you have acted in simple good faith, in accord with your excellent Suffolk Colthurst instincts; and they are very safe things to go by as a rule.
It was right and kind of you to help dear Adela to take up the problem of a young man who had rather more money than was good for him, and who would be all the better for having a nice sensible girl to spend it for him. And we are free to admit that Adela was capable of making herself uncommonly useful in that way if only she would have brought her mind to bear upon the subject.
Please don’t jump to such hasty conclusions, says a Feminine Reader at this point—alas! that we have so few. When sir, you suggest that dear Adela was not allowing her mind to bear upon the subject of Mr. Philip, you merely prove how nearly human ignorance of the crude masculine variety can come to the precipice of a very unsafe conclusion.
The fact that dear Adela wore sequins, says this wise lady, when she knew that Mr. Philip thought they did not do justice to her charms, and the fact that she was at pains to let him know that her afternoon at Queen’s Hall had tired her so much that she now preferred salted almonds to general conversation, should make it clear to the meanest intelligence that dear Adela had a thinking part. If, as you say, proceeds our mentor, this young man was an eldest son, and his evening clothes suited him so very well—which, by the way, one rather takes for granted in Grosvenor Square—it was just as well perhaps for him to learn to come to heel at the outset, so that both dear Adela and he might be saved unnecessary trouble after Dr. Bridge had played Op. 9.
It is hard, concludes the wise lady, for human error of the crude masculine variety to go much further than yours has done, if for a moment you could allow your deluded readers to imagine that a well-born girl could treat with more than feigned indifference an educated Englishman with a comfortable private fortune. Because no well-born girl ever is indifferent to three addresses and possibly a yacht, however much she may appear to be so.
The morning following being Sunday, dear Adela kept her bed till Monday instead of going to church.
“Where is the Pain?” said Sir Wotherspoon Ogle Bart.