“Don’t tell me,” said Lady Leighton solemnly, “that you don’t want to know people, and be properly taken up again. Of course you don’t require to be pushed into society like a mere millionaire who is nobody. You are quite different. People remember you. They say to me, ‘Oh, that is the Miss Ferrars of the Gloucestershire family.’ Everybody knows who you are. You have nothing to do but to choose a nice house—and there are plenty at this time of the season to be had for next to nothing—and to give a few really nice dinners. Doing it judiciously, finding out when people are free, for of course it does happen now and then that there will be a day when there is nothing going on, you can manage it yet. And everybody knows that your husband is very rich. You could do enough at least to open the way for next season, and make it quite simple. But, my dear, in that case you must not go on wasting these precious days, without deciding on anything and living in a hotel.”
“You take away my breath,” said Mrs. Rowland. “I have not the least desire to be taken up by society. If I had, I think what I saw the other day would have been enough to cure me; but I never had the smallest thought—my husband is rich, I suppose, but he does not mean to spend his money so. He means to live—at home—among his own people.”
Evelyn’s voice, which had been quite assured, faltered a little and trembled as she said these last words.
“Among his own people!” said Lady Leighton, with a little shudder. “Do you mean to say——! Now, my dear Evelyn, you must forgive me, for perhaps I am quite wrong. I have heard about Mr. Rowland. I have always heard that he was—that he had been——” Madeline Leighton was a person of great sense. She saw in Evelyn’s naturally mild eyes that look of the dove enraged, which is more alarming as a danger signal than any demonstration on the part of the eagle. She concluded hastily, “A very excellent man, the nicest man in the world.”
“You were rightly informed,” said Mrs. Rowland, somewhat stiffly. “My husband is as good a man as ever lived.”
“But to go and settle among—his own people! perhaps they are not all as good as ever lived. They must be a little different to what you have been used to. Don’t you think you should stipulate for a little freedom? Frank’s people are as good as ever lived, and they are all of course, so to speak, in our own set. But if I were condemned to live with them all the year round, I should die. Evelyn! it is, I assure you, a very serious matter. One should begin with one’s husband seriously, you know. Very good women who always pretend to like everything they are wanted to do, and smother their own inclinations, are a mistake, my dear. They always turn out a mistake. In the first place they are not true any more than you thought me to be the other day. They are cheating, even if it is with the best of motives. And in the end they are always found out. And to pretend to like things you hate is just being as great a humbug as any make-believe in society. Besides, your husband would like it far better if you provided him with a little amusement, and kept his own people off him for part of the year.”
“I don’t think Society would amuse him at all,” said Evelyn, with a laugh. “And besides, he has no people that I know of—so that you need not be frightened for me—except his own children,” she added, with involuntary gravity.
Lady Leighton gave vent to an “O!” which was rounder than the O of Giotto. Horror, amazement, compassion were in it. “He has children!” she said faintly.
“Two—and they, of course, will be my first duty.”
“Girls?”