The slow, plaintive answer of Miss Carruthers was unexpected and it was startling. “You may know them. I believe they go about in London a good deal. Some people called Childwick.”
“Childwick.” Mame gave a slight gasp. “Have they a girl named Gwendolen?” Yet there was no need to ask. She knew.
So plaintive grew the voice of Miss Carruthers that Mame longed to shake her. “Gwendolen is their only child. A great heiress.”
Mame felt something turn inside her heart. She bit her lip; and then she gave a little snort of defiance. Miss Carruthers sighed long and grievously.
XLV
THE knowledge which came in its fulness to Mame in an after-luncheon talk with Lady Kidderminster, that the Towers was let to the Childwicks on a lease of seven years with an option of purchase, did nothing to stem the growing tide of her gloom. She might have guessed. But the recognised fact hit her hard. The Childwicks of all people! That supercilious queen to get away with the whole bag of tricks.
Lady K. was quite candid. She had the same openness in discussing high finance as in less intimate affairs of life. Since the War they had simply been hanging on by their eyelids as it were. The Scotch property had gone; so had the property in Lancashire; the town house was let, also to the Childwicks, those providential folk, who had lately decided to make England their home. Everybody thought it so fortunate to have such good tenants for the Towers; people who could not only afford to keep up the place in the old way, but who were likely to take a permanent interest in it.
Miss Du Rance was constrained to think so too. As she peered into the eyes of Bill’s mother she could not help admiring her fortitude. How this dame must loathe her, little interloper! What plans she had wrecked! Yet there was nothing about this woman, and there never had been, to give the least inkling of what her real feelings were towards her.
Not once, it was true, since Mame’s arrival at the Dower House, had Lady Kidderminster mentioned Bill. The other queer old pet, that Miss Carruthers, had also refrained from mentioning him. Otherwise all was ease and charm and friendliness, although it sure had a trick of fizzling into the dead alive.
This quality of not being quite on the earth, so to speak, was not confined to the inmates of the Dower House. It was shared by the friends and neighbours. Screams of all kinds seemed to make a point of turning up about teatime. Almost invariably they were of Mame’s own sex. And such clothes as they wore! And such comic one-horse shays as for the most part they came in! Frightfully well-bred they were with real Court manners, full of ceremonial. Had good Lady K. been England’s queen these dear old buzzards could not have treated her with more deference.