He showed his cousin the room in which her grandfather and grandmother died—an immense apartment, wherein stood, grim and tall, a gigantic mahogany four-poster, draped with dark green velvet.
'I can't fancy anybody doing anything else in such a room,' said Ida, to whom the spacious chamber looked as gloomy as a charnel-house. 'I beg your pardon. I hope you don't sleep here.'
'No, my diggings are at the other end of the house, looking into the stable-yard. I like to be able to put my head out of window and order my horse—saves time and trouble. We keep the rooms at this end for visitors.'
The gong boomed loud and long, much to the relief of poor Blanche, whose spirits had been slowly sinking, in unison with her inward cravings, and who had begun to think that the promised luncheon was a delusion and a snare, which would end in the fashionable frivolity of afternoon tea.
Sir Vernon offered his arm to Miss Wendover, and asked Brian to take Miss Palliser, while Peter was told off to Miss Rylance, leaving Bessie and the clinging Blanche like twin cherries on one stem. It was curious for Ida to find herself seated presently beside the wealthy cousin of whom she had heard as a far-off and almost mythical personage, of very little account in her life; since it was so improbable that any of his wealth would ever come her way.
The luncheon was of the old-fashioned and ponderous order, excellent of its kind: the orchard-houses had given up their finest peaches and nectarines and their earliest grapes to do honour to the occasion. Miss Rylance contemplated the table decorations with mute scorn, which she hardly cared to disguise. No Venetian wine-flasks, no languorous lilies swooning in Salviati goblets, no pottery of the new green and yellow school, but massive silver, and heavy diamond-cut glass—gaudy Staffordshire china of 'too utterly quite' the worst period of art. Everything essentially Philistine.
Sir Vernon had placed his cousin on his left hand, and he talked to her a good deal during luncheon—asking questions as to her past life, which she answered with perfect candour. It was only when he spoke of her future that the fair brow clouded, and the cheeks reddened with a painful glow.
'I hope, now that the ice has been broken, that we are not going to be strangers any more,' said Vernon, pleasantly. 'To think that you should be such a near neighbour of mine, and that I should know nothing about it! You have been at Kingthorpe since last November, you say? How long are you going to stay there?'
'For a good many Novembers, I hope,' said Aunt Betsy, 'unless she gets tired of rural solitude, or unless a husband steals her away from me.'
'Ah, that is what all young ladies anticipate. They never are but always to be blest,' replied Vernon, laughing. He was one of those open-hearted souls who always appreciate their own mild jokelets.