“Yes, it is strange my coming across him in this way, isn’t it?”
“Very. I do not know my Uncle Gascoyne, but we were extremely sorry to hear of his son’s tragic death. You knew him?”
“Barely. I had spoken to him once.”
She waited as if expecting me to talk about young Gascoyne, but I held my tongue.
“Was my uncle very much affected?”
“Terribly. I don’t think he or his wife will ever get over it.”
“I am afraid he must have thought me very heartless.” She evidently felt somewhat guilty at their neglect.
We went in to lunch. Everything was wonderfully well done, and I could see that she was determined to make the Grange as attractive as possible to her brother, and to give him no reason for keeping away from it. I recall that quiet Sunday lunch most vividly. The long, low dining-room with its panelled walls hung with pictures of dead and departed ancestors, the stretch of green lawn with the blue depth of the pine-wood beyond. From somewhere came the scream of a peacock, that perfect discord which only nature could have attempted. On my left at the head of the table sat Miss Gascoyne, beautiful and white, in a condition of stately and armed truce.
She managed most perfectly to import into her expression every now and then something which might remotely have laid claim to being called a smile. For the rest, she listened to me during the greater part of the meal with every appearance of attention, answering me with no vulgar or obvious intention of a desire to snub me, although her disapproval of my presence was patent.
I made her laugh, however, as soon as I had discovered the vulnerable point in her armour of gravity. Finally, I ventured an appeal to her snobbery; for I could see that she was a snob, although in her it was a vice trained and cultivated by breeding into what might have passed before the world as a virtue.