“Well, General,” she said, “perhaps we are going a little too fast. We don’t know yet whether anything will come of it. George is rather a lady’s man. It may be only a flirtation; it may end in nothing. We need not begin to count our chickens——”
“Why, it was you!” cried the astonished General. “I never should have remarked anything about it, or wasted a moment’s thought on the subject!”
Mrs Gaunt was not a clever woman, skilled in the art of leaving conversational responsibilities on the shoulders of her interlocutor; but if a woman is not inspired on behalf of her youngest boy, when is she to be inspired? She gave her shoulders the slightest possible shrug and left him to his newspaper. They had a newspaper from England every morning—the ‘Standard,’ whose reasonable Conservatism suited the old General. Except in military matters, such questions as the advance of Russia towards Afghanistan, or the defences of our own coasts, the General was not a bigot, and preferred his politics mild, with as little froth and foam as possible. His newspaper afforded him occupation for the entire morning, and he enjoyed it in very pleasant wise, seated under his veranda with a faint suspicion of lemon-blossom in the air which ruffled the young olive-trees all around, and the blue breadths of the sea stretching far away at his feet. The garden behind was fenced in with lemon and orange trees, the fruit in several stages, and just a little point of blossom here and there, not enough to load the air. Mrs Gaunt had preserved the wild flowers that were natural to the place, and accordingly had a scarlet field of anemones which wanted no cultivation, and innumerable clusters of the sweet white narcissus filling her little enclosure. These cost no trouble, and left Toni, the man-of-all-work, at leisure for the more profitable culture of the olives. From where the General sat, there was nothing visible, however, but the terraces descending in steps towards the distant glimpse of the road, and the light-blue margin, edged with spray, of the sea—under a soft and cheering sun, that warmed to the heart, but did not scorch or blaze, and with a soft air playing about his old temples, breathing freshness and that lemon-bloom. Sometimes there would come a faint sound of voices from some group of workers among the olives. The little clump of palm-trees at the end of the garden—for nothing here is perfect without a palm or two—cast a fantastic shadow, that waved over the newspaper now and then. When a man is old and has done his work, what can he want more than this sweet retirement and stillness? But naturally, it was not all that was necessary to young Captain George.
Mrs Gaunt went over to the Durants in the afternoon, as she so often did, and found that family, as usual, on their loggia. It cost her a little trouble and diplomacy to get a private inspection of the Peerage, and even when she did so, it threw but little light upon her question. Geoffrey Viscount Markham, tenth lord, was a name which she read with a little flutter of her heart, feeling that he was already almost a relation; and she read over the names of Markham Priory and Dunmorra, his lodge in the Highlands, and the town address in Eaton Square, all with a sense that by-and-by she might herself be directing letters from one or other of these places. But the Peerage said nothing about the Dowager Lady Markham subsequent to the conclusion of the first marriage, except that she had married again, E. Waring, Esq.; and thus Mrs Gaunt’s studies came to no satisfactory end. She introduced the subject, however, in the course of tea. She had asked whether any one had heard from Frances, and had received a satisfactory reply.
“Oh yes; I have had two letters; but she does not say very much. They had gone down to the Priory for Easter; and she was to be presented at the first drawing-room. Fancy Frances in a Court train and feathers, at a drawing-room! It does seem so very strange,” Tasie said. She said it with a slight sigh, for it was she, in old times, who had expounded Society to little Frances, and taught her what in an emergency it would be right to do and say; and now little Frances had taken a stride in advance. “I asked her to write and tell us all about it, and what she wore.”
“It would be white, of course.”
“Oh yes, it would be white—a débutante. When I went to drawing-rooms,” said Mrs Durant, who had once, in the character of chaplainess to an Embassy, made her courtesy to her Majesty, “young ladies’ toilets were simpler than now. Frances will probably be in white satin, which, except for a wedding dress, is quite unsuitable, I think, for a girl.”
“I wonder if we shall see it in the papers? Sometimes my sister-in-law sends me a ‘Queen,’” said Mrs Gaunt, “when she thinks there is something in it which will interest me; but she does not know anything about Frances. Dear little thing, I can’t think of her in white satin. Her sister, now——”
“Constance would wear velvet, if she could—or cloth-of-gold,” cried Tasie, with a little irritation. Her mother gave her a reproving glance.