“Why, Carnaby must be quite an eligible bachelor in these parts,” said Robinette; but Miss Smeardon was so deadly literal that she accepted the remark as a serious one.
“Not quite yet; in a few years’ time we shall need to be very careful, there are so many girls here, but not all of them desirable, of course.”
“There are? What a dull time they must have with the Married Men, the Celibate, the Paralytic, and Carnaby! I’m glad my girlhood wasn’t spent in Devonshire.”
Conversation ended here, for the carriage rumbled up the avenue, and Robinette looked about her eagerly. Revelsmere was a nice old house, surrounded by fine sloping lawns and a background of sombre beechwoods. The lawns to-day were dotted with groups of people, mainly women, and elderly at that. As Robinette and Miss Smeardon alighted at 202 the door an elderly hostess welcomed them, and an elderly host led them across the lawn and straightly they fell into the clutches of more and more elderlies.
“It is fairly bewildering!” Robinette cried in her heart; then she saw a bevy of girls approaching; such nice-looking girls, happy, well dressed, but all unattended by their suitable complement of young men.
“For whom do they dress, here? They’ve a deal of self-respect, I think, to go on getting themselves up so nicely for themselves and the Celibate, the Paralytic, and Carnaby,” thought Robinette, as she watched them.
Presently another couple came across the lawn; the young woman was by no means a girl, rather heavily built, with a high fixed colour. She was attended by a man. “Not the Celibate certainly,” thought Mrs. Loring with a glance at his bullock-like figure, his thick neck, and glossy black hair, “nor the Paralytic; and it’s not Carnaby. It must be a new arrival!”
At that moment it began to rain, but nothing daunted, their hostess approached her, and saying pleasantly that she wished to introduce her to Miss Meredith, she left Robinette and the young woman standing together under a spreading tree, and took the gentleman away with her.
The moment that she heard the name, Robinette realized who Miss Meredith was. They seated themselves side by side on a garden bench, and Miss Meredith remarked upon the heat, planting a rather fat hand upon the arm of the garden seat, and surveying it complacently, especially the very bright diamond ring upon the third finger.