"I believe that's my aunt!" he exclaimed. "She wants me to call at Blenheim on the way home, and I suppose the Morrisons told her where I was."
He managed to slip his head out between the edge of an awning and the mignonette and geraniums of a window-box.
"It's my aunt, right enough. May I fetch her up, Mrs. Stewart?" He was down the stairs in a moment and voluble in low-voiced colloquy with the lady in the barouche.
Lady Wolvercote was organizing the great fancy fair for the benefit of the County Cottage Hospitals, and had left the dramatic part of the programme to her nephew to arrange. She was a tall, slight woman, of the usual age for aunts, and pleasant to every one; but she took it for granted that every one would do as she wished—naturally, since they always did in her neighborhood. As she stumbled up the stairs after Charlie Fitzroy—it was a dark staircase and narrow in proportion to its massive oak balusters—she felt faintly annoyed with him for dragging her into the quarrels of his middle-class friends, but confident that she could manage them without the least trouble.
Milly was relieved at the return of Mr. Fitzroy with his aunt. She had had an unhappy five minutes with Mrs. Shaw, who had been saying cryptic but unpleasant things and calling her "Mildred"; whereas she did not so much as know Mrs. Shaw's Christian name.
Seeing Mrs. Shaw, beautiful, animated, well-dressed, and Milly neatly clothed, since her clothes were not of her own choosing, but with her hair unbecomingly knotted, the brightness of her eyes, complexion, and expression in eclipse, Lady Wolvercote wondered at her nephew's choice. But that was his affair. She began to talk in a rather high-pitched voice and continuously, like one whose business it is to talk; so that it was difficult to interrupt without rudeness.
"So you're going to be kind enough to act Galatea for us at our fancy fair, Mrs. Stewart? We want it to be a great success, and Lord Wolvercote and I have heard so much about your acting. My nephew said the part of Galatea would suit you exactly; didn't you, Charlie?"
"Down to the ground," interpolated, or rather accompanied, Fitzroy. "We shall have the placards out on Wednesday, and people are looking forward already to seeing Mrs. Stewart. There'll be a splendid audience."
"Every one has promised to fill their houses for the fair," Lady Wolvercote was continuing, "and the Duke thinks he may be able to get down ——," she mentioned a royalty. "You're going to help us too, aren't you, Mrs. Shaw? It's so very kind of you. We've got such a pretty part for you in a musical affair which Lenny Lumley wrote with somebody or other for the Duchess of Ulster's Elizabethan bazaar. There's a chorus of fairies—nymphs, Charlie? Yes, nymphs, and we want them all to be very pretty and able to sing, and there's a charming dance for them. I'm afraid that silly boy, Jim Morrison, made some mistake about it, and told you we wanted you to act Galatea. But of course we couldn't possibly do without you in the other thing, and Mrs. Stewart seems quite pointed out for that Galatea part. Jim's such a dear, isn't he? And such a splendid actor, every one says he really ought to go on the stage. But we none of us pay the least attention to anything the dear boy says, for he always does manage to get things wrong."
Mrs. Shaw had been making little movements preparatory to going. She had no gift for the stage except beauty, but that produces an illusion of success, and she took her acting with the seriousness of a Duse.