She was dressed in rich dark silk—not mourning; she wore no widow's cap, but had her fine hair simply braided in a heavy and beautiful coil at the back of her handsome head, and she looked as fair and lovely as she must have done on her marriage morning.
Bevil Goring had begun to address Alison, whose sweet eyes were shyly upturned to his as she placed in the bosom of her dress a rosebud he had taken from the lapel of his coat, when the deep Doric voice of Archie Auchindoir was heard announcing the bête-noire of both.
'Lord Cawdbury.'
CHAPTER V.
ALISON'S LUNCHEON PARTY.
A man, between fifty and sixty years of age, having a short, paunchy, and ungainly figure, grizzled hair, ferret-like eyes with a cunning unscrupulous expression, and a long heavy moustache which was almost white, entered with a smiling face and an easy and well-assured air that was born, not of innate good breeding, but of the supreme confidence given by position and a well-stocked purse.
Coarse and large hands and ears, with an over-display of jewellery, especially two or three gold-digger-like rings, showed that, though the second peer of his family, Lord Cadbury was of very humble origin indeed.
His face wore its brightest smile as he greeted his hostess, Alison, and under his white moustache showed the remainder of a set of teeth that, as Jerry Wilmot said afterwards, were like the remnants of the old Guard, 'few in number and very much the worse for wear.'
He shook the slender hand of Sir Ranald with considerable cordiality, yet not without an air of patronage, bowed over Mrs. Trelawney's gloved fingers, nodded slightly to the three officers (Cadbury did not like military men), and, seating himself by Alison's side, banteringly accused her of running away at Salthill and leaving him behind (he did not say in the ditch), which was precisely what she did do; nor did she attempt to excuse herself, but simply rose and took his arm when Archie announced the luncheon was ready, and, the moment he seated himself, the peer began to expatiate upon the improvements he was making at Cadbury Court, for behoof of the table generally, though his remarks were made especially to her; but she heard with indifference a description of the vineries, pineries, and so forth, which he was erecting at a vast cost.
Not so her father, who, with the pince-nez balanced on his aristocratic nose, heard of these things with a face which wore a curiously mingled expression of satisfaction and contempt; for he failed not to recognize a tone of vulgar ostentation that seemed so well to suit, he thought, 'the tradesman's coronet of yesterday,' and endeavoured to turn the conversation to hunting, though his days for it were passed.