"I'm sure so," he answered, carelessly and confidently. "I'll make Peters put it in his contract. Why, Clara, what is it? just the throwing out of a window? They might do it in a week if they chose. But just as you like, my dear."
Again, hearing the conversation, Mrs. Chester and the Miss Jupps joined in, taking wholly Mr. Lake's view of the matter. The only one who spoke with an interested motive was Mrs. Chester: the others were as honest as the day in what they said--honest in their inexperience.
And Clara was borne down once more in this as in the last, and agreed to the alteration being begun.
"It won't be much more than putting in a fresh window frame," decided Margaret Jupp.
No more shilly-shallyings now, no more questions of whether they should go or not. Mr. Lake went over that same afternoon to Katterley, in attendance on the Miss Jupps; saw the builder, Peters, and had the work put in hand On the Saturday he and his wife both went over, to return in the evening.
It was a sultry midday. Lady Ellis sat on the lawn under the shelter of a spreading lime-tree, whose branches had been more redolent of perfume a month or two ago than they were now.
The sky was cloudless, of a dark hot blue; the summer petals, clustering on the flower-beds, opened themselves to the blistering sun. Lady Ellis was alone with her netting. She wore a black silk gown and little cap of net, all the more coquettish for its simplicity, its plain lappets hanging behind. Her work proceeded slowly, and finally she let it fall on her knee as one utterly weary.
"What a life it is here!" she murmured in self-commune. "Say what they will, India is the paradise of women. Where means are in accordance; servants, dress, carriages, horses, incessant gaiety, it may be tolerable here; but where they are lacking--good heavens! how do people manage to exist?"
"The world has gone hard with me," she resumed after a pause. "Two years of luxury to be succeeded by stagnation. I'd never have married Colonel Ellis--no, though he did give me a title--had I supposed his money would go to his children and not to me."
Another pause, during which she jerked the netting-silk up and down.