But Frances did not reply; indeed, she scarcely heard her sister’s remarks. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was feeling self-conscious and constrained. He was there of course, Horace, that is to say, looking his best in his rough tweed suit and brown leather gaiters, bright and eager and evidently in excellent spirits as he shook hands with his fair neighbours. Though underneath this, one who knew him intimately—his sister, had she been on the lookout for it—might have discerned a certain nervousness, of which a superficial judgment would little have suspected this very smart young man of the day of being capable.
The air was exhilarating; with one exception they were all young, and as they walked on together, the sound of their voices in lively talk, broken now and then by Betty’s silvery laugh in response to some merry speech, told their own tale, and that a pleasant one.
Frances glanced at her little sister with satisfaction.
“Betty is looking ever so much better than last night,” thought she; “perhaps she is one of those people—they are often really the loveliest—who are at their best by daylight, though as far as dress goes she and Eira are almost more at a disadvantage than in the evening,” as her eyes strayed from her sister’s neat but unmistakably “home-made” country attire to the perfect finish and cut of Madeleine’s and Gertrude’s short-skirted “tailor” costumes.
For the days are past, if indeed they ever existed, in which “anything,” however dowdy or shabbily fine, was considered “good enough” for country wear. Partly, perhaps, owing to the fact, ignored or scarcely realised, that our ancestresses at no very remote period—those who figured, and deservedly, in books of beauty or on immortal canvases—knew not what country life in our modern sense of the word really is or should be. They never walked; for who would call a stroll up and down a terrace or across a park in clinging draperies and lace “fichus” worthy of the name?
As they emerged from the lodge gates, the party fell naturally into twos and threes. Madeleine, with her usual unselfishness undertaking the entertainment of Mr Charlemont, led the way. And soon Frances, though, needless to say, by no connivance of her own, found herself to all intents and purposes tête-à-tête with Horace.
“What has become of Mr Morion?” she asked, more for the sake of saying something than from any real interest in that personage’s movements.
“I really don’t know,” Horace replied, half absently. “He’s a queer fish. He went off this morning early somewhere; that’s rather his way. When you’re staying at Witham-Meldon you never see your host till late in the day. He doesn’t mind how many people he has to stay so long as they look after themselves or each other till late afternoon or dinner-time. I have even known him stroll into the drawing-room when everybody was assembled as if he had nothing to do with it all, and greet people here and there with an offhand ‘good-morning.’”
“It must be rather uncomfortable,” said Frances, “rather as if you were all staying at a hotel?”
Horace laughed.