“Poor woman!” said Lady Engleton. “Well, Mr. Fleming, what are the sporting prospects this autumn?”
He pulled himself together, and his face lighted up. On that subject he could speak for hours.
Of Joseph Fleming his friends all said: The best fellow in the world. A kinder heart had no man. He lived on his little property from year’s end to year’s end, for the sole and single end of depriving the pheasants and partridges which he bred upon the estate, of their existence. He was a confirmed bachelor, living quietly, and taking the world as he found it (seeing that there was a sufficiency of partridges in good seasons); trusting that there was a God above who would not let the supply run short, if one honestly tried to do one’s duty and lived an upright life, harming no man, and women only so much as was strictly honourable and necessary. He spoke ill of no one. He was diffident of his own powers, except about sport, wherein he knew himself princely, and cherished that sort of respect for woman, thoroughly sincere, which assigns to her a pedestal in a sheltered niche, and offers her homage on condition of her staying where she is put, even though she starve there, solitary and esteemed.
“Do tell me, Mr. Fleming, if you know, who is that very handsome woman with the white hair?” said Lady Engleton. “She is talking to Mrs. Walker. I seem to know the face.”
“Oh, that is Miss Valeria Du Prel, the authoress of those books that Mrs. Walker is so shocked at.”
“Oh, of course; how stupid of me. I should like to have some conversation with her.”
“That’s easily managed. I don’t think she and Mrs. Walker quite appreciate each other.”
Lady Engleton laughed.
Mrs. Walker was anxiously watching her daughters, and endeavouring to keep them at a distance from Miss Du Prel, who looked tragically bored.
Joseph Fleming found means to release her, and Lady Engleton’s desire was gratified. “I admire your books so much, Miss Du Prel, and I have so often wished to see more of you; but you have been abroad for the last two years, I hear.”