L’échine souple of the snob and the courtier was wanting in her. “You might have swallowed your ancestor’s sword,” said one of her girl playmates once to her; and she thought bitterly, “My father’s ‘shooting-irons’ are the only substitute for ancestral steel that I know!”
But yet she bore herself as though she had all the barons of Runnymede behind her; and she could not bend or cringe. “I don’t know how the devil she comes by it, but she is certainly thoroughbred,” thought her host. “Who knows what grace of Geraldines, or strength of Hamiltons, or charm of Sheridans, may have filtered into the veins of some ancestor of hers in the long, long ago?”
CHAPTER XII.
In the March and early April of the next year there was very bad weather in England: snow, sleet and storm, killing sheep, starving cattle, delaying railway-trains, and covering much in the woodland nooks where the primrose roots were getting ready their buds for sacrifice at Westminster in the drollest form of hero-worship which a generation bereft of any sense of humor ever invented.
The moors were vast unbroken plains of virginal whiteness, and the woods looked black against a steely sky as Hurstmanceaux got into the express which had been signalled by telegram to stop for him at the little station outside the park of a country house at which he had been staying in the North Riding. The engine snorted, hissed and flung up steam and fire into the chilly air as he hastened across the platform.
He got quickly into the carriage indicated to him by his servant, pushing his dog before him, and the train had moved off before he saw that there was a lady in the compartment, to whom he lifted his Glengarry cap with a word of apology for the presence of his collie.
“I am very fond of dogs,” said the lady with a smile, and the collie smelt the hem of her gown and the fur of her cloak with approval.
“Thanks!” said his master, and, as he looked at her, thought how “well-groomed,” in his own vernacular, she was. She did not belong to the county he felt sure. He had never seen her before, and he knew all the Ridings well.
She was plainly dressed in dark cloth; but the sables lining her cloak were of the finest; her gloves were of perfect fit and texture; her buttoned velvet boots were admirably made; she had a little velvet toque on a shapely head; she had an air of great distinction and simplicity combined.
She resumed the perusal of her book, and he unfolded a morning paper. The train swung on its way at great speed. The dog, Ossian, lay down in the middle of the carriage. The glass of the windows was silvered with hoar-frost; nothing was to be seen out of them of the country through which they were being hurried. The snow fell continually; there was no wind.