‘They are all real people to Joyce,’ said Greta. ‘She is not like us, who only take up a book now and then. She lives among books: she thinks as much of Shakespeare as of Scotland. He is not only a poet, he is a—he is a—well, a kind of world,’ she said, blushing a little. ‘I don’t know what other word to use.’
‘You could not have used a better word,’ said Norman Bellendean. ‘I am not a very great reader, but I’ve found that up at a hill-station where one had neither books nor society. I think that was very well said.’
Norman looked with a friendly admiration at his little cousin, and she, with a half glance and blush of reply, looked at Mrs. Bellendean at the head of the table, who, on her side, looked at them both. There was a great deal more in this mutual communication than met the eye.
‘Decidedly,’ said Sir Harry; ‘no one is good enough for this society unless he has undergone a preliminary training at the hands of Miss Joyce.’
‘Don’t you think,’ said a new voice hurriedly, with a ring of impatience in it, ‘that to bandy about a young lady’s name like this is not—not—quite good taste? Probably she would dislike being talked about—and certainly her friends——’
The young people turned in consternation to the quarter from which this utterance came. The Colonel’s wife had not hitherto attracted much attention. It had been settled that he was ‘an old darling:’ but Mrs. Hayward had not awakened the interest of these judges. They had decided that she was not good enough for him—that she had been the governess perhaps, or somebody who had nursed him through illness, or otherwise been kind to him—and that it was by some of these unauthorised methods that she had become Colonel Hayward’s wife. Greta blushed crimson at this rebuke.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘no one meant anything that was not kind. I would not allow a word to be said. I—am very fond of her. She is my dear friend.’
‘Perhaps it is not very good taste to discuss any one,’ said the plain young lady. ‘But Mrs. Hayward probably does not know who she is.’
‘I know that she is your inferior,’ said Mrs. Hayward quickly; ‘but that should make you more particular, not less, to keep her name from being bandied about.’
‘What is that my wife is saying?’ said Colonel Hayward from the other end of the table. ‘I can hear her voice. What are you saying, Elizabeth? She must be taking somebody’s part.’