She paused before answering, taken aback by his looks, as she described it afterwards, for he put her in mind of Sir Peter. It was as nice a face as Sir Peter’s used to be, clean-shaved, except for the light whiskers: and if those were not Sir Peter’s kindly blue eyes, why, her memory failed her. But the dress puzzled Mrs. Layne: he wore a dark-blue frock-coat and grey trousers, a white waistcoat with a thin gold chain passed across it and a drooping seal: all very nice and gentlemanly certainly, but quite plain. What she had expected to see the heir attired in, Mrs. Layne never afterwards settled with herself: perhaps purple and miniver.
“I beg your pardon sir,” she said, speaking at length, “but I think you must be Sir Geoffry?”
“Yes, I am Sir Geoffry.”
“Lord bless me!” cried Mrs. Layne.
She told him who she was, adding, as an apology for being found there, that her ladyship had invited her and her girls, and wouldn’t take a denial. Geoffry held out his arm cordially to lead her to the tent, and glanced behind at the “girls,” remembering what his mother had said to him of one of them: “a sweet-looking young woman, Geoffry, poor Layne’s daughter, quite an elegant girl.” Yes, she was sweet-looking and elegant also, Geoffry decided. The elder one was like her mother, short, stout, and—Geoffry could not help seeing it—commonplace. He told Mrs. Layne that he could remember her husband still: he spoke of a ride the doctor had taken him, seated before him on his horse; and altogether in that short minute or two won, by his true affability, the heart of the doctor’s widow.
The tent was crowded to confusion. Waiters were running about, and there was much rattle of knives and forks. Sir Geoffry could find only two places anywhere; at which he seated Mrs. Layne and her daughter Elizabeth, according to precedence.
“I will find you a place in the other tent, if you will come with me,” he said to Mary.
She wished to refuse. She had a suspicion that the other tent was the one for the “lords and ladies,” people who were altogether above her. But Sir Geoffry was holding up the canvas for her to pass out, and she was too timid to disobey. He walked by her side almost in silence, speaking a courteous word or two only, to put her at her ease. The band was playing “The Roast Beef of Old England.”
But the other tent seemed in worse confusion as far as crowding went. Some one turned on her seat to accost Sir Geoffry: a slight, upright girl, with finely-carved features of that creamy white rarely seen, and a haughty expression in her very light eyes.
“You are being waited for, Geoffry. Don’t you know that you preside?”