“What is his name?”
“Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, the Fitzpierses of Buckbury-Fitzpiers—not a great many miles from here.”
“I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family. I was never in the county till my husband brought me here.” Mrs. Charmond did not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious merit might attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she herself could claim it, her adaptable, wandering weltbürgerliche nature had grown tired of caring about—a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors. “It is of rather more importance to know what the man is himself than what his family is,” she said, “if he is going to practise upon us as a surgeon. Have you seen him?”
Grace had not. “I think he is not a very old man,” she added.
“Has he a wife?”
“I am not aware that he has.”
“Well, I hope he will be useful here. I must get to know him when I come back. It will be very convenient to have a medical man—if he is clever—in one’s own parish. I get dreadfully nervous sometimes, living in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so far to send to. No doubt you feel Hintock to be a great change after watering-place life.”
“I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its disadvantages.” Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of the attendant circumstances.
They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease by her entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a woman not to know that to show a marked patronage to a sensitive young girl who would probably be very quick to discern it, was to demolish her dignity rather than to establish it in that young girl’s eyes. So, being violently possessed with her idea of making use of this gentle acquaintance, ready and waiting at her own door, she took great pains to win her confidence at starting.
Just before Grace’s departure the two chanced to pause before a mirror which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so as to bring into prominence their resemblances and their contrasts. Both looked attractive as glassed back by the faithful reflector; but Grace’s countenance had the effect of making Mrs. Charmond appear more than her full age. There are complexions which set off each other to great advantage, and there are those which antagonize, the one killing or damaging its neighbor unmercifully. This was unhappily the case here. Mrs. Charmond fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a cursory remark of her companion’s. However, she parted from her young friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know as soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had suggested.