“I am not very beautiful now, I am afraid,” answered Miss Moffat; “tired, burnt up with the sun and the wind, and smothered with dust, I feel utterly ashamed of my appearance.”
“Ah! well you need not be, my dear. I always thought you would grow up very pretty, but certainly I never expected to see you so pretty as you are. What do the Kingslough oracles think of Gracie Moffat now?”
“The Kingslough oracles disapprove of my being personally presentable,” Grace answered. “They likewise think it a pity that, if I were designed to be good-looking, good looks were not conferred upon me in my youth. Further, they consider that as I have plenty of money, I ought to be plain; and, besides all this, they think I am not so particularly good-looking after all.”
“The dear Kingslough! It is like a dream of old times to hear its opinions summed up so concisely.”
“I wonder what Kingslough would think of your present state of magnificence,” said Grace, a little mischievously. “If you were to drive through Kingslough in this carriage, you would have the whole town out, and furnish conversation for a month.”
Mrs. Hartley laughed, but her mirth was a little forced; she did not like her splendour dimmed by the breath of ridicule, but she was too much a woman of the world to show her annoyance.
“When we are in Turkey we do as the Turkeys do, to borrow a phrase from one of your own countrymen,” she answered. “If any adverse wind stranded me to-morrow in Ireland, I should at once purchase a jaunting-car and advertise for a Protestant without incumbrance, able to drive and wait at table.”
Miss Moffat remembered that when the speaker was stranded in Kingslough she dispensed even with the jaunting-car; but Mrs. Hartley had so neatly hit off the popular method of proceeding, that Grace, tired as she was, and feeling rather lonely and miserable, thought that silence might be wisdom, and refrained from reminding her friend of the dreary drives they had taken in that particular style of conveyance which the young lady detested.
“Besides,” went on Mrs. Hartley, as though guessing at her companion’s thoughts. “I am now a much richer woman than I was in those days. Money has come to me as it generally does to people who have it. Gold has a way of attracting gold which is certainly very remarkable. I used to think my income was as large as I should care to have it, but since more has been added I find I can manage to spend it very comfortably.”
This scrap of conversation may be taken as samples of many which followed. Mrs. Hartley and her guest talked, walked, drove, paid visits together, but they did not at once fall into the old familiar relations that had formerly been so pleasant.