However, there it was. This little struggling artist had refused Harry; and she had refused Duddon.
For one could not be so absurd as to ignore that. Victoria, sitting in the shade beside Lady Barbara, who had gone to sleep, looked dreamily round on the rose-red pile of building, on the great engirdling woods, the hills, the silver reaches of river—interwoven now with the dark tree-masses, now with glades of sunlit pasture. Duddon was one of the great possessions of England. And this slip of a girl, with her home-made blouses, and her joy in making twenty pounds out of her drawings, wherewith to pay the rent, had put it aside, apparently without a moment's hesitation. Magnanimity—or stupidity?
The next moment Victoria was despising her own amazement. "One takes one's own lofty feelings for granted—but never other people's! She says she doesn't love him—and that's the reason. And I straightway don't believe her. What snobs we all are! One's astonishment betrays one's standard. Gerald says, 'What have the poor to do with fine feelings?' and I detest him for it. But I'm no better."
Suddenly, on the other side of the yew hedge behind her—voices. Harry and Lydia Penfold, in eager and laughing discussion. And all at once a name reached her ears:
"Lydia"—pronounced rather shyly, in Tatham's voice.
"Lydia!" No doubt by the bidding of the young lady.
"I did not know I was so old-fashioned," thought Lady Tatham indignantly.
Yet the tone in which the name was given was neither caressing nor tender. It simply meant, of course, that the young woman was breaking him in to her ideas; her absurd ideas, from which Harry must be protected.
They emerged from the shrubbery and came toward her. Lydia timidly approached Victoria. With Tatham she had not apparently been timid. But for his mother she was all deference.
"Isn't there a flower-show here to-morrow? May Susan and I come and help?"