Colonel Marchant was at the family dinner in Charles Street. It had been agreed between Mrs. Vansittart and her son that he should be invited to this one gathering, so that he should not have any ground for considering himself left out in the cold, albeit his future son-in-law’s intention was to hold as little communion with him as possible. Eve’s neglected girlhood had not fostered filial affection. The parental name had been a name of fear in the Marchant household, and the sisters had been happiest when their father was amusing himself in London, careless of whether the angry baker had stopped the daily supply, or the long-suffering butcher had refused to deliver another joint. Such a man had but little claim upon a daughter’s love, and Eve had confessed to Vansittart that her father was not beloved by his children, and that it would not grieve her if in her future life she and that father met but rarely.
“You are going to be so generous to me,” she said, “that I shall be able to help my sisters—in ever so many ways—with their clothes, and with their housekeeping; for I can never spend a third part of the income you are settling upon me.”
“My frugal Eve! Why, there are women with half your charms who would not be able to dress themselves upon such a pittance.”
“I have no patience with such women. They should be condemned to three gowns a year of their own making, as my sisters and I have been ever since we were old enough to handle needles and scissors. I am horrified at the extravagance I have seen at the dressmaker’s—the reckless way some of your sister’s friends spend money.”
“And my sister herself, no doubt. She has a rich husband, and I dare say is one of the worst offenders in this line?”
“Not she! Lady Hartley dresses exquisitely, but she is not extravagant like the others. She is too generous to other people to be lavish upon herself. She is always thinking of doing a kindness to somebody.”
“Poor little Maud! I remember when she was in the schoolroom all her pocket-money used to be spent upon dolls for the hospital children. She used to come and beg of me when she was insolvent.”
Vansittart met Wilfred Sefton at an evening party within a few days of that rencontre at Chelsea; and at the same party Vansittart was disturbed by seeing Sefton and his mother in close confabulation in one of those remote and luxurious corners where people are not obliged to listen to the music that is being performed in the principal room.
He questioned his mother about Sefton at breakfast next morning. “You and he seemed uncommonly thick,” he said. “What were you talking about?”