It seemed to Lisle that the best thing he could do would be to draw young Clare into talk over luncheon and leave Sir Gilbert and Mrs. Clare to get on together as best they could. Luigi responded readily enough to Everard’s advances, all he asked just then being to be left alone by his “grandfather,” whom he still regarded with secret fear and trembling, the enormity of the fraud of which he had been guilty impressing itself far more unpleasantly on his consciousness when in the presence of the baronet than at any other time. Both the young men were careful to confine their talk to the merest generalities. Both of them were on their guard, neither of them could tell yet what his future relations towards the other might develop into.
As for the baronet, he proceeded to mount one of his antiquarian hobbies (it may have been of set purpose, and in order to save both Giovanna and himself the awkwardness of having to make talk about nothing in particular) and ambled on, apparently to the content of both himself and his listener. Nothing more was required of Mrs. Clare than to look interested and to interject an occasional “Yes,” or “No,” or “Indeed,” at the proper moment, all of which she did to perfection, although three-fourths of Sir Gilbert’s monologue was clearly beyond her comprehension.
When luncheon was over, the baronet, turning to Everard, said: “Mr. Lisle, I want you to be good enough to conduct Mrs. Clare and my grandson over the house and grounds, and to show them everything worth seeing. Mrs. Burton will place herself at your disposal as far as the house is concerned, and you can impound Shotover to show you over the gardens, and so forth. For myself, I am sorry that the infirmities of age should have so far prevailed over me as to preclude me from undertaking a task which otherwise would have been one of unmixed pleasure. You will find me in the library when you have finished your peregrination: but there is no need whatever for you to hurry yourselves.”
CHAPTER XX.
SIR GILBERT’S DECISION
The Mrs. Burton referred to by Sir Gilbert was housekeeper at the Chase, having held that position since the death of the second Lady Clare. She was a widow, middle-aged, thin, prim, and as upright as a dart, and was still able to pride herself on the slimness of her figure. Her manners pertained to what might be termed the severely genteel school. She was careful to impress upon everyone with whom she was brought into contact that she was “a lady by birth,” but it was a statement which she evidently intended people to accept unfortified by any particulars of her parentage and early history, with regard to which, indeed, it was noticed that she was studiously reticent. Her peculiarities notwithstanding, she made an excellent housekeeper, and the baronet valued her accordingly.
It had not been often in the course of her uneventful existence that anyone had succeeded in more than faintly stirring the chilly shallows of Mrs. Burton’s gentility, but this morning she had been more nearly startled out of her propriety than had happened to her since her advent at Withington Chase.
Sir Gilbert had sent for her immediately after breakfast, and without a word of preface, and with no more apparent concern than if he were giving his orders about dinner, had said:
“Mrs. Burton, I am expecting two people to luncheon to-day whom you have never yet seen, and probably never as much as heard of. They are my daughter-in-law and my grandson. After luncheon I should like them to be shown by you over the house. Mr. Lisle will accompany them in my place. So if you will kindly hold yourself in readiness and meanwhile give orders for the shutters of the unused rooms to be thrown open, and for an article or two of furniture here and there to be uncovered, I shall feel obliged.”
Mrs. Burton had issued the requisite orders and had then shut herself up in her room to think over the astounding news which had just been told her, while endeavouring to regain her much-disturbed equanimity. She was one of those women who seem to have a special faculty for ferreting out every particular, or incident of consequence in the career of anyone in whom they are interested, and she had flattered herself that there was no fact of any moment in the life of Sir Gilbert with which she was not already acquainted. To-day, however, he had proved to her how egregiously she had been mistaken. A daughter-in-law and a grandson, and she, Felicia Burton, not to have known of their existence! She felt as if Sir Gilbert had put a grievous personal affront upon her.
But she was her usual prim, precise, close-lipped self when in her dress of black satin, a heavy gold chain round her neck, her faded hair crowned with a tasteful lace cap, and carrying a bunch of highly polished keys, she proceeded to show the little party over what might be termed the state apartments of the old mansion, not one of which had been entered by Sir Gilbert since his second wife’s death. From room to room they went in leisurely fashion—the large drawing-room, the small ditto, “my lady’s boudoir,” the state dining-room, and so on, taking each in turn; and then upstairs, where a couple of the “best bedrooms” invited inspection—each and all being denuded of carpets and curtains, and of everything except its own special suite of furniture. Still, no great exercise of the imagination was needed to picture what those spacious and stately apartments must at one time have looked like, nor what they might very easily be made to look like again. Last of all they came to the picture-gallery, where the housekeeper, with an elaborate courtesy and a thin acid smile, took her leave.