Anne sniffed. “Much you could tell of what a woman meant!” she said. “Where’s your mother now?”
“In her room,” admitted Mary unwillingly.
“Making herself bewitching! What did I tell you?” cried Anne.
Mrs. Garden floated into the dining-room in a perfectly irresistible gown, which none of her daughters had seen before. It was all foaming pinks and white, with irruptive lace and bows of three shades of pink nestling in it, and it had an absurd cap to enhance it, that looked, on Mrs. Garden’s soft light hair, as if she had brushed against the dawn and a bit of a pink and white cloud had clung to her head.
“Does look as if Anne were right! If she isn’t, it’s rather mean to make it harder for him,” Jane whispered to Mary, while Lord Wilfrid was helping Mrs. Garden to her chair with a look that proved the wonderful morning costume not lost upon him. He, too, was wonderfully transformed by shaving and the loss of the disguising beard.
Mrs. Garden was sweetly gracious, a charming hostess. She smiled upon Lord Wilfrid and asked about acquaintances they shared in London, how his mother, Lady Kelmscourt’s eyes were; she hoped they were better. Whether his sister, the Honourable Clara, had long felt ill effects from that ugly fall from her horse? And whether her darling little boy, Ralph, was growing strong and big?
The Garden girls could not eat much for listening to these familiar quotations from novels, as the talk sounded to them, and also feeling that they were taking part in private theatricals. But Lord Kelmscourt seemed to consider it all perfectly natural, as indeed it was, for acquaintances meeting after separation ordinarily inquire for common friends; it was an accident that these people bore titles which made them seem unreal to the three Vineclad maidens. Mary noted with satisfaction that Lord Wilfrid did not eat like a blighted being. He did full justice to the excellent breakfast, undaunted by its predecessor of that morning.
Breakfast over, Win hesitated, looking painfully embarrassed. He did not want to betray his knowledge of what Mary had told him, that his sister-in-law had ordained that this genuine and attractive Englishman was not to remain her guest. On the other hand, Win did not want to leave the house without bidding him good-bye. Mary alone noticed that Win was in a quandary, and was turning over in her mind ways of solving his difficulty, when Lord Wilfrid ended it.
“Are you off, Mr. Garden? You said before breakfast that you must hasten to the office; I gather that you are reading law? Now my disguise has proved so flimsy that your sister penetrated it immediately, and I must return to New York. I should be glad if I might linger in Vineclad, but the decree has gone forth I must also go forth! Awfully glad to have met you, Mr. Garden; hope to see you again. When you come over, look me up in London, if we don’t meet here. I had a delightful drive up here with you and the little girls—I beg their pardon: the young ladies! Here’s my card; that club will always give you an address to reach me.” Lord Kelmscourt shook hands with painful heartiness, clasping Win’s hand till it hurt him.
“Oh, I think I’ll see you again here; I hope so,” Win could not help saying, with unmistakable sincerity. He thoroughly liked this man, whose forty years should have been a barrier between them, but who was forty years young, and companionable to the youth of not much more than half his age.