“Romaine is an iconoclast, I see,” he remarked, fretfully. “He is possessed with that modern devil of paint and varnish that is the ruin of everything in these days. The place looks quite unlike itself.”
“But doesn’t it look better than it ever did?” asked Letty, who would have been glad to see some paint and varnish at Corbin Hall. This the Colonel disdained to answer.
They were ushered into a handsome and modernly furnished drawing-room by Mr. Romaine’s own man, who wore a much injured expression at finding himself in Virginia and the country to boot. Newport suited his taste much better. The Colonel sniffed contemptuously at the Turkish rugs, divans, ottomans, lamps, screens and bric-à-brac that had taken the place of the ancient horsehair furniture. Letty looked around, consumed with envy and longing.
Presently Mr. Romaine appeared, followed by the Chessinghams and Ethel Maywood, who was looking uncommonly handsome. As soon as greetings were exchanged, the Colonel attacked Mr. Romaine about what he called his “vandalism” in refurnishing his house. Mr. Romaine laughed his peculiar low laugh.
“Why, if I had let that old rubbish remain here, which had no associations whatever, except that it was bought by my father’s agent—a person of no taste whatever—I should have been constantly reminded of the flight of time, a thing I should always like to forget.”
“Life, my dear Romaine,” remarked the Colonel, solemnly, “is full of reminders of the flight of time to persons of our advanced years, and we have but a brief span in which to prepare for another world than this sublunary sphere.”
At this Mr. Romaine, excessively nettled, turned to Letty and began to describe to her a very larky ballet he had witnessed in New York just before leaving for Virginia. Letty, in her innocence, missed the point of the story, which annoyed and amused Mr. Romaine. The Colonel by that time was deep in conversation with gentle Gladys Chessingham, whom he sincerely admired, and so did not catch Mr. Romaine’s remarks, of which he would have strongly disapproved.
Among the four young people—Farebrother, Letty, Sir Archy and Ethel Maywood—a slight constraint existed. Each girl so resolutely believed in the falsity of the other’s ideas where men were concerned that each was on the alert to be shocked. Sir Archy was wondering if his friends, the Chessinghams, were suspecting him of trifling with Ethel Maywood’s feelings, and Farebrother was heartily wishing that Ethel would succeed in landing the baronet in her net, and so leave Letty for himself.
Nevertheless, they made talk naturally enough. Ethel was secretly much disgusted with the country as she saw it. There were few of the resources of English country life at hand, and as she had been educated to depending upon a certain round of conventional amusements to kill time, she was completely at a loss what to do without them. Reading she regarded as a duty instead of a pleasure. But with the class instincts of a well born English girl, she conceived it to be her duty to say she liked the country at all times, and so protested in her pretty, well-modulated voice. Sir Archy and Farebrother were temporary resources, but no more. As for Sir Archy, she regarded him as much more unattainable than he fancied himself to be. It would be too much good luck to expect for her to return to England as Lady Corbin of Fox Court, and so she dismissed the dazzling vision with a sigh, and made up her mind to fly no higher than Mr. Romaine. Letty wondered how the domestic machinery ran at Shrewsbury, with black servants picked up here and there in the country—for the Shrewsbury negroes, having no personal ties to the place, had scattered speedily after the war. Ethel soon enlightened her.
“Turner”—that was their maid—“is really excessively frightened at the blacks. They grin at her so diabolically, and she can’t get rid of the impression that all blacks are cannibals, and as for Dodson and Bridge”—the two valets—“they do nothing but complain to Reggie, and he says he expects them both to give warning before the month is out.”