"But it would look ravishing wherever you wore it," averred her husband, dodging the geranium-spray she threw at him, and there followed a brisk engagement with the flowers left in the box, to which Honour listened with some secret contempt but considerable interest, as she sewed on her roses where her mother had pinned them. Honour was learning lessons which ran counter to every maxim that had influenced her hitherto, and baffled all her efforts to reconstruct her vanished world. Those were the days when phrenology was considered an indispensable aid to instructors of youth, and a professor of the science had duly felt Honour's bumps, and recorded, for the guidance of her cousins, his mature opinion that, "though this young lady will not find it easy to apply herself to fresh subjects of study, yet she will never lose what she has once mastered." But in this case the mastering was the difficulty. To her, life had hitherto meant a round of recurring duties, to be performed conscientiously as they came, and love a blinding illumination revealing to a humble worshipper the form of a hero and a saint, but ending preferably in renunciation—if voluntary and wholly unnecessary so much the nobler and better. To think of love in connection with an ordinary, average man was something very like sacrilege, and poor Honour fairly shuddered when Mrs Jardine, who bore her a grudge for unsettling Mr Jardine's mind with the new views she had brought from home, broke to her the horrible fact that she had made two ordinary young men fall in love with her. It was of a piece with the disturbing discovery that whereas she had come out, as she understood, to soothe the declining years of her aged parents, those parents, though grey-haired, were disconcertingly hale and hearty, and asked only that she would be happy and make herself agreeable—two tasks of which Honour found the first impossible, and the second extremely difficult.
Her daughters took a very secondary place in Lady Cinnamond's mind when her husband was in question, and it was seldom that Sir Arthur had to complain of his wife's not being present to receive him when he returned from his duties. She ran into his snuggery now like a girl, and broke into the liquid Spanish which formed such an effective defence against the ears of aides-de-camp or English-speaking servants.
"You are tired, my Arturo. The sitting has been very long. Were the
Durbar open to reason?"
"My dearest, they have no thought but to procrastinate and obstruct business, and our excellent Colonel indulges them far too tenderly. Every form of ceremony must be observed, and all the long-drawn compliments duly inserted, until a whole morning is wasted over one small matter."
"And my poor Arturo must sit and listen to it?"
"For his sins he must." Sir Arthur smiled whimsically at his wife. "Judge for yourself how contentedly he did it to-day, my sweet one. The Durbar knew that the home mail had come in, and scented a glorious opportunity. Every man had to be satisfied of the health of her Majesty, Prince Albert, all the little princes and princesses, the Duke of Wellington, and the Chairman of the Court of Directors. When the memory or ingenuity of one failed, his neighbour took up the tale. Then some genius remembered a precious piece of gup, and asked with all solemnity whether it was true that a new Governor-General had been appointed, which led to a canvass of the merits of all possible candidates. There sits poor Antony with agony in his eyes, seeing his time wasted to no purpose, and all the business left undone, while he can't bring himself to check the Sirdars in their loquacity. I saw James Antony fuming behind him. Rose of my heart, your Arthur will be indiscreet enough to confide to you a profound secret. If the Resident goes up to the hills, and his brother takes his place, the Sirdars will be taught the meaning of despatch."
"So much the better for the conduct of business, then. But they will not love him as they do the Colonel."
Sir Arthur laughed. "I fancy James can dispense with their affection if he secures their obedience. The Colonel desired his compliments to you, my love, and begged that you would not consider his absence this evening in any way a slight, since his principles demand it of him. The furbelows all ready, eh?"
"Nearly. But, Arturo, I have been entertaining Mrs Jardine the greater part of the morning."
"Some nice new piece of scandal, eh? What was the 'real duty' that brought her out in the heat?"