Mother now entered into conversation with them both, and I stood by the window looking out into the square, and wondering why the Duchess had coloured when she saw him. Why had she called him Jim? If she only met him last year abroad it was scarcely likely that she would be intimate enough to speak to him by his Christian name. A moment later she rose.
"You may take me down to my carriage, Jim," she said. "Good-bye, Westenra; you are a naughty girl, full of defiance, and you think your old godmother very unkind, but whenever you step up I shall be waiting to help you. Good-bye, good-bye. Oh hurry, please, Mr. Randolph, some of those creatures may be coming in. Good-bye, dear, good-bye."
She nodded to mother, laid her hand lightly on Mr. Randolph's arm, who took her down and put her into her carriage. They spoke together for a moment, I watched them from behind the drawing-room curtains, then the carriage rolled away, and the square was left to its usual solid respectability. Doctors' carriages did occasionally drive through it, and flourishing doctors drove a pair of horses as often as not, but the strawberry on the panels showed itself no more for many a long day in that region.
At lunch the boarders were in a perfect state of ferment. Even Captain and Mrs. Furlong were inclined to be subservient. Did we really know the Duchess of Wilmot? Captain Furlong was quite up in the annals of the nobility. This was one of his little weaknesses, for he was quite in every sense of the word a gentleman; but he did rather air his knowledge of this smart lady and of that whom he had happened to meet in the course of his wanderings.
"There are few women I admire more than the Duchess of Wilmot," he said to mother, "she is so charitable, so good. She was a Silchester, you know, she comes of a long and noble line. For my part, I believe strongly in heredity. Have you known the Duchess long, Mrs. Wickham?"
"All my life," answered mother simply.
"Really! All your life?"
"Yes," she replied, "we were brought up in the same village."
The servant came up with vegetables, and mother helped herself. Captain Furlong looked a little more satisfied.
Mrs. Armstrong gave me a violent nudge in the side.