The manner was distinctly "loud," and looking at the speaker, the voice seemed to lose half its charm.
"How do you like our home, Mr Carstairs?"
"Very much indeed. I was admiring this room when you came in!"
The clouded eyes seemed to light up with a flash of pleasure. "Charlie does all this. I haven't got any taste in these things." Carstairs was more astonished than ever, but he made a remark which occurred to him as suitable, then they drifted into generalities. She asked Carstairs about his home. "I know that part fairly well," she explained. "I've hunted over a good bit of it."
"Have you?" Carstairs was genuinely surprised. Darwen had never told him.
Mrs Darwen laughed, rather a coarse laugh. "That is to say, I followed the hounds, while Charlie was at school at Clifton. I used to have a day out occasionally, just to remind me of old times." She sighed deeply. "I was brought up in the Quorn district, you know."
"That's Leicester way, isn't it?"
"Round there. That was where I met Charlie's father. Poor dear Tom, he wasn't much of a horseman."
"I used to follow them sometimes when I was a kid," Carstairs observed.
"Did you? I suppose you would." She looked him over with approving eyes, somewhat, he felt, as a groom looks over a nice horse; and there was no doubt Carstairs was a very fine animal.