“We must think what we shall do to amuse ourselves, mustn’t we? You have begun your round of dinners already, I hear; but in Raby they are apt to be a trifle too agricultural. All the men talk about their crops at this time of the year, and, as the prospects are generally bad, they get gloomier and gloomier as each course comes on. Mr Druce told me that Mr Early has paid you a visitation, so, if you take his conversation as a sample, you can judge of the combined effect. I don’t ask what he talked about, because I know!”
“Yes,” murmured Ruth vaguely, while her eye met Mollie’s in an involuntary appeal. “Mr Druce told me!”—But Mr Early’s call had taken place only three days before, nearly a week after Lady Margot’s visit to the Court. “Mr Druce told me!” That meant that Margot had met Victor yesterday or the day before, and had talked with him some time, for the prosy Mr Early would not be an early subject of conversation. Victor often went out riding alone, and there was no reason in the world why he should not call on an old acquaintance. But why make a mystery of it, and avoid the call to-day by an obvious subterfuge? Ruth was very quiet for the rest of the visit, and Lady Margot glanced at her more than once as she chatted with Mollie. When tea was over she came out to the porch to watch their departure.
“Au revoir, Berengaria—au revoir, Lucille!” she cried gaily, as the carriage drove away; but as she turned from the door, the smile faded from her face, and was replaced by a very thoughtful expression.
“I see—I see it all! Poor pretty thing!” she said tenderly to herself. “I am sorry for her and for poor Margot, too! Which of us, I wonder, is the more to be pitied?”
Chapter Twenty One.
Preparing for the Garden-Party.
Mrs Thornton took counsel with her husband as to the best form of hospitality she could show to the squire’s visitors.
“I want to be one of the first to entertain them formally. It is a duty in our position,” she explained. “The girls have been to tea several times, and that dear Mollie runs up to the nursery as naturally as if she were at home; but I think we ought to do more. The squire will expect it; and then the question is, dear—what can we do?”