“She has a nephew,” Rosy said to herself, for she was far too quick not to have noticed Archie Dunstan’s evident admiration of Miss Derwent. But she had the discretion to keep this reflection to herself.
And, after all, Mrs Milward made no objection to her grand-daughter’s accompanying Lady Hebe to Pinnerton Lodge on the afternoon in question.
“That sort of thing,” she remarked, with some inconsistency, “is quite different. You can go anywhere for a fancy fair or a charity entertainment;” forgetting that her grand-daughter was sure to be specially thrown into the society of the Derwent girls on such an occasion, and little suspecting that Rosy intended to profit to the utmost by such an opportunity of seeing more of both Blanche and Stasy. For Hebe quite reassured her as to the welcome she would receive.
“They’re so thoroughly nice, so simply well-bred,” Hebe said, “so pleased to give pleasure. Otherwise, I should have felt almost ashamed to go myself, for it is much more marked for Josephine not to call, than your grandmother—an old lady, and living at some distance.”
All went well. The weather was mild, almost warm; there were no threatening rain-clouds or clouds of any kind on the afternoon fixed upon; so, to Stasy’s great delight, it was decided that the tea-tables should be set out in the garden, or rather on the tennis-lawn at one side of the house. Lady Hebe and her friend were the first to arrive, and were full of admiration of the way in which the Derwents had arranged their preparations.
“How pretty you have made the tables look!” said Hebe to Mrs Derwent. “It’ll be quite a lesson in itself to the girls. I’m afraid our part of the country is very deficient in taste. We are so dreadfully old-fashioned and conservative.”
“But many old-fashioned ways and things are in much better taste than new-fashioned ones,” Mrs Derwent replied. “Good taste seems to come in cycles. I must say there was great room for improvement in such things when I was a girl.”
“You lived near here then, did you not?” said Hebe. “Yes, at Fotherley, near Alderwood, you know,” said Mrs Derwent. “I was so happy there, that it made me choose this part of England in preference to any other, when the time came for us to make our home here.”
She sighed a little.
“It is a very nice part of the world, I do think,” said Hebe. “But I suppose it takes a little time to get to feel at home anywhere. And it must seem very strange to you to come back to the same place after so many years.”