“A clever woman, no doubt; very clever, to have secured a lodge-keeper’s berth without being obliged to open the gate; a woman who knows how to take care of herself.”
“You ought not to disparage her, Godfrey. The poor thing has known so much trouble—think of what it was to lose the daughter she loved—and in such a way—worse than death.”
“I don’t know about that. Death means the end. A loving mother might rather keep the sinner than lose the saint, and the sinner may wash herself clean and become a saint—after the order of Mary Magdalene. If this Mrs. Porter had been really devoted to her daughter she would have followed her and brought her back to the fold. She would not be here, leading a life of genteel idleness in that picturesque old cottage while the lost sheep is still astray in the wilderness.”
“You are very hard upon her, Godfrey.”
“I am hard upon all shams and pretences. I have not spoken to Mrs. Porter above half a dozen times in my life—she never opens the gate for me, you know—but I have a fixed impression that she is a hypocrite—a harmless hypocrite, perhaps—one of those women whose chief object in life is to stand well with the Vicar of her parish.”
They were at the hall door by this time, and it was a quarter to eight.
“Let us sit in the drawing-room this evening, Godfrey,” said Juanita, as she ran off to dress for dinner. “The library would give me the horrors after last night.”
“My capricious one. You will be tired of the drawing-room to-morrow. I should not be surprised if you ordered me to sit on the housetop. We might rig up a tent for afternoon tea between two chimney stacks.”
Juanita made a rapid toilet, and appeared in one of her graceful cream-white tea-gowns, veiled in a cloud of softest lace, just as the clocks were striking eight. She was all gaiety to-night, just as she had been all morbid apprehension last night; and when they went to the drawing-room after dinner—together, for it was not to be supposed that Sir Godfrey would linger over a solitary glass of claret—she flew to the grand piano and began to play Tito Mattei’s famous waltz, which seemed the most consummate expression of joyousness possible to her. The brilliant music filled the atmosphere with gaiety, while the face of the player, turned to her husband as she played, harmonized with the light-hearted melody.
The drawing-room was as frivolously pretty as the library was soberly grand. It was Lady Cheriton’s taste which had ruled here, and the room was a kind of record of her ladyship’s travels. She had bought pretty things or curious things wherever they took her fancy, and had brought them home to her Cheriton drawing-room. Thus the walls were hung with Algerian embroideries on damask or satin, and decorated with Rhodian pottery. The furniture was a mixture of old French and old Italian. The Dresden tea services and ivory statuettes, and capo di monte vases, and Copenhagen figures, had been picked up all over the Continent, without any regard to their combined effect; but there were so many things that the ultimate result was delightful, the room being spacious enough to hold everything without the slightest appearance of over-crowding.