The wedding was to be soon. Marriages were patched up quickly in the light-hearted sixties. And here there was nothing to wait for. Sir John had found Denzil compliant on every minor question, and willing to make his home at the Manor during his mother’s lifetime.
“The old lady would never stomach a Papist daughter-in-law,” said Sir John; and Denzil was fain to confess that Lady Warner would not easily reconcile herself with Angela’s creed, though she could not fail of loving Angela herself.
“My daughter would have neither peace nor liberty under a Puritan’s roof,” Sir John said; “and I should have neither son nor daughter, and should be a loser by my girl’s marriage. You shall be as much master here, Denzil, as if this were your own house—which it will be when I have moved to my last billet. Give me a couple of stalls for my roadsters, and kennel room for my dogs, and I want no more. You and Angela may introduce as many new fashions as you like; dine at two o’clock, and sip your unwholesome Indian drink of an evening. The fine ladies in Paris were beginning to take tea when I was last there, though by the faces they made over the stuff it might have been poison. I can smoke my pipe in the chimney-corner, and look on and admire at the new generation. I shall not feel myself one too many at your fireside, as I used sometimes in the Rue de Touraine, when those strutting Gallic cocks were quizzing me.”
There were clouds of dust and a clatter of hoofs again in front of the floriated iron gate; but this time it was not the Honourable Henriette who came tripping along the gravel path on two-inch heels, but my Lady Fareham, who walked languidly, with the assistance of a gold-headed cane, and who looked pale and thin in her apple-green satin gown and silver-braided petticoat.
She, too, came attended by a second coach, which was filled by her ladyship’s French waiting-woman, Mrs. Lewin, and a pile of boxes and parcels.
“I’ll wager that in the rapture and romance of your sweethearting you have not given a thought to petticoats and mantuas,” she said, after she had embraced her sister, who was horrified at the sight of that painted harridan from London.
Angela blushed at those words, “rapture and romance,” knowing how little there had been of either in her thoughts, or in Denzil’s sober courtship. Romance! Alas! there had been but one romance in her life, and that a guilty one, which she must ever remember with remorse.
“Come now, confess you have not a gown ordered.”
“I have gowns enough and to spare. Oh, sister! have you come so far to talk of gowns? And that odious woman too! What brought her here?” Angela asked, with more temper than she was wont to show.
“My sisterly kindness brought her. You are an ungrateful hussy for looking vexed when I have come a score of miles through the dust to do you a service.”