“No! Really! It’s too weird!” exclaimed the bridge-and-hunting lady. “I hope she’s not an ‘art’ person?”
“No.” And the gloomy man began to be cheerful, seeing that his talk had awakened a little interest. “No, not at all. She told me she liked pictures, but hated artists. I said she couldn’t have pictures without artists, and she agreed, but observed that fortunately all the finest pictures of the world were painted by artists who were dead. Curious way of putting it!”
“Going off it?” queried the Chivalrous Youth, having now drained his tumbler of drink.
“No, I don’t think so. The fact is—er—she—well, she appeared to me to be rather—er—clever!”
Clever? Oh, surely not! The “county” dames almost shuddered. Clever? She couldn’t be, you know!—not with that spoilt old-young sort of face! And her hair! All dyed, of course! And her voice was very affected, wasn’t it? Yes!—almost as if she were trying to imitate Sarah Bernhardt! So stupid in a woman of her age! She ought to know better!
So the little vicious, poisonous, gossiping mouths jabbered and hissed about the woman who was “left” like a forgotten apple on a bough to wither and drop unregarded to the ground. No one had anything kind to say of her. It mattered not at all that they were not really acquainted with her personally or sufficiently to be able to form an opinion,—the point with these precious sort of persons was, and always is, that an unwanted feminine nonentity had arrived in the neighbourhood who was superfluous, and therefore likely to be tiresome.
“One can always leave her out of a dinner invitation,” said one woman, thoughtfully. “It will be quite enough to ask Mr. and Mrs.”
“Oh, quite!”
Thus it was settled; meanwhile Diana, happily unconscious of any discussion concerning her, went on the even tenor of her way, keeping house for her parents, reading her favourite authors, studying her “scientific” subjects, and working at her tapestry without any real companionship save that of books and her own thoughts, and the constant delight she had in the profusion of flowers with which the gardens of Rose Lea abounded. These she arranged with exquisite taste and effect in the various rooms, so artistically that on one occasion the vicar of the parish, quite a dull, unimaginative man, was moved, during an afternoon call, to compliment Mrs. Polydore May on the remarkable grace with which some branches of roses were grouped in a vase on the table. Mrs. May looked at them sleepily and smiled.
“Very pretty, yes!” she murmured. “I used to arrange every flower myself, but now my daughter Diana does it for me. You see she can give her time to it,—she has nothing else to do.”