In his heart, which was secretly perturbed, was room for the wish that he had been found in other than the high-buttoned gaiters and breeches of his country life. But he suffered no sign of that or of his more serious misgivings to appear, as he advanced to greet the still beautiful woman, who sat daintily warming one sandalled foot at the red embers on the hearth. She was far from being at ease herself. Warnings which her husband had addressed to her at parting recurred and disturbed her. But it is seldom that a woman of the world betrays her feelings, and her manner was perfect as he bent low over her hand.
“It is long,” she said gently, “much longer than I like to remember, Sir Robert, since we met.”
“It is a long time,” he answered gravely; and when she had reseated herself he sat down opposite her.
“It is an age,” she said slowly; and she looked round the hall, with its panelled walls, its deep window-seats, and its panoply of fox-masks and antlers, as if she recalled the past, “It is an age,” she repeated. “Politics are sad dividers of friends.”
“I fear,” he replied, in a tone as cold as courtesy permitted, “that they are about to be greater dividers.”
She looked at him quickly, with appeal in her eyes. “And yet,” she said, “we saw more of you once.”
“Yes.” He was wondering much, behind the mask of his civility, what had drawn her hither. He knew that it could be no light, no passing matter which had brought her over thirteen miles of Wiltshire roads to call upon a man with whom intercourse had been limited, for years past, to a few annual words, a formal invitation as formally declined, a measured salutation at race or ball. She must have a motive, and a strong one. It was only the day before that he had learned that Lord Lansdowne meant to drop his foolish opposition at Chippinge; was it possible that she was here to make a favour of this? And perhaps a bargain? If that were her errand, and my lord had sent her, thinking to make refusal less easy, Sir Robert felt that he would know how to answer. He waited.
VII
THE WINDS OF AUTUMN
Lady Lansdowne looked pensively at the tapering sandal which she held forward to catch the heat. “Time passes so very, very quickly,” she said with a sigh.
“With some,” Sir Robert answered. “With others,” he bowed, “it stands still.”