‘These are strong-minded ladies, who are, I believe, the fashion, too—whom the men don’t care for, and who, consequently, pretend not to care for the men.’
‘Well, that’s very flattering to us, at least,’ said Lord Will. He was perhaps a little too much in the movement of his time to accept it as the gospel it has always been supposed to be, and was even a little disposed to laugh in his sleeve at the antiquated charmer who held by that old doctrine. Mrs. Swinford’s air of the ancient seductrice and devourer of men was not a new thing to this experienced youth.
‘It comes to much the same thing,’ said Leo, ‘for the Frenchmen adjourn for their cigarette after they have reconducted the ladies. Come, mother, let him be English for to-night. I have something to say to him, too.’
‘My son,’ said Mrs. Swinford, with the blandest smile, ‘Lord Will shall choose between us. I am not going to exercise any pressure, or pull against you.’
The natural result, of course, was that in a minute or two more Mrs. Swinford was established in the great drawing-room in her favourite chair, just within reach of the influence of the blazing, cheerful fire, amid the banks of flowers and pleasant twinkling of the lights, with Lord Will before her, at her feet.
‘We need not detain you, Leo,’ she said, with a nod and a smile; ‘I know your liking for this hour by yourself.’
‘I have no choice of one hour more than another by myself,’ said Leo, ‘and I, too, prefer the company of my guest to my own.’
‘Go, dear boy,’ she said, kissing the tips of her fingers. ‘I prefer that you should not remain: I have a great deal to say, and it is grave. You can say your say afterwards. At present, I don’t want to be contradicted. It puts me out.’
Leo looked at her with an earnest remonstrance in his eyes, but she continued to nod and smile at him, waving him away with that action of her arm which had once been so graceful and playful. Leo had been brought up to think all his mother’s movements graceful, and herself the most distinguished of women. But there was a painful sense of unwilling ridicule in his mind as he looked back at her waving him away, placed in the most careful pose in the great chair, and with the young man, much perplexed between curiosity and embarrassment, and a sense of ridicule, too, in the low chair at her feet. He withdrew into the shade beyond the pillars, but he did not go away. His mother could still see him moving in the partial dark, standing staring at a half-seen picture, or taking up and throwing down again book after book.
‘We are not to be left quite alone,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders; ‘Leo acts sheep-dog. It is a new rôle for him. But whether it is in my interest or yours, Lord Will, I cannot tell.’