“No public ball—but there were a good many dances,” with half a sigh. “Lady Hartley gave one just before Lent, the only one to which we were invited, and I am happy to say it was out and away the best.”
“Lady Hartley has been more than kind to us,” said Eve, finding speech at last. “She is the most charming woman I ever met. You must be very proud of such a sister.”
“I am proud to know that you like her,” answered Vansittart, in a low voice.
He was sitting at her elbow, helping her by handing the cups and saucers, and very conscious that her hand trembled when it touched his.
“My daughter is right,” said the Colonel, with a majestic air; “Lady Hartley is the one lady in this neighbourhood—the one womanly woman. She saw my girls ignored, and she has made it her business to convince her neighbours that they are a little too good for such treatment. Other people have been prompt to follow her lead.”
“Oh, but it’s not for that we care. It is Lady Hartley’s friendship we value, not her influence on other people,” protested Eve eagerly.
“We are going to Redwold to-morrow afternoon,” said Jenny; “but I don’t suppose we shall see you, Mr. Vansittart. You will be shooting, or fishing, or something.”
“Shooting there is none, Miss Vansittart. The pheasants are a free and unfettered company in the copses, among the primroses and dog-violets. Man is no longer their enemy. And I never felt the angler’s passion since I fished for sticklebacks in the shrubbery at home.”
The Colonel chimed in at this point, as if thinking the conversation too childish.
He began to discuss the political situation—the chances of a by-election which was to come on directly after Easter. He expressed himself with the ferocity of an old-fashioned Tory. He would give no quarter to the enemy. He had just returned from Paris, he told Vansittart, and had seen what it was to live under a mobocracy.