CHAPTER XXV.—AT THE PHEASANTRY.
‘I have letters to write—one to the Lord-lieutenant in particular, on county business,’ said the Earl, smiling, and addressing himself to Captain Denzil; ‘otherwise I daresay that I too should have been able to find something worth the showing you out of doors. As it is, you young people must go without me.’
Jasper, who had a lazy man’s horror of improved implements, Dutch dairies, new patent draining-tiles, and cattle-food, and who knew the Earl’s passion for farming, felt inwardly grateful to the Lord-lieutenant for detaining his noble host within doors. The Countess had not the slightest intention of accompanying her guests in their visit to the pheasantry. Except in a carriage, or in dry weather among the well-rolled paths of the rose-garden, Lady Wolverhampton scarcely ever left the house. Her age, though she looked younger, was within a year or two of that of her lord, and he was by far the stronger of the two. Indeed it was mainly due to her declining health and growing incapacity for exertion that the High Tor family had for this year foregone what most persons of their rank regard less as a pleasure than as a duty, the passing of at least a portion of the season in London.
The party from Carbery Chase had been very cordially received. People can afford yet to cultivate the old-fashioned quality of cordiality in rural retirement, where it answers to detect hidden merits and to see in the best light the things and persons in the midst of which and whom our lives have to be passed.
‘I am glad,’ said the Countess, ‘that Captain Denzil was able to come over with you to-day, my dears.’
With Sir Sykes’s two daughters the mistress of High Tor was on sufficiently familiar terms; but their brother’s character was not quite so much esteemed by the De Vere family as were theirs. Still, in the country, a young man and an elder son is per se a being of some importance, and to Jasper, with his arm yet in the black silken sling, there attached somewhat of romance, on account of his late accident and the adventurous way in which he had incurred it. He had not been expected, and his presence at High Tor was taken as a compliment.
Scarcely had the Ladies Maud and Gladys De Vere had time to don the pretty hats that so well set off the comeliness of the one and the bright beauty of the other, before their brother came into the room. Lord Harrogate had a riding-whip in his hand, and a long ride over the purple moorlands in prospect; but he was easily induced to defer it, and to make one of the party, that presently sauntered across the park towards a sunny sandy nook, screened from cold north winds by a friendly belt of fir and pine, where the new pheasantry had been established.
Near to the place where a footpath led to a sequestered dell, the new governess Miss Gray and her pupil met the group of advancing sight-seers. Ethel would have passed on with a quiet graceful bow of recognition; but Lady Alice had no notion of being thus shelved.
‘You are going to look at the pheasants,’ she said; ‘and we have just seen them. They seem rather frightened, but so very pretty!’
The words which young Lady Alice had employed when speaking of the exotic birds would have been singularly appropriate to Ethel Gray. The new governess looked timid and something more than pretty during the general hand-shaking and interchange of civil conventional phrases which now ensued. Jasper, whose acquaintance with Ethel was of the slightest, had contented himself with lifting his hat; but he had stared at her beautiful face with as cool a steadiness of gaze as though she had been a picture or a statue. Why Lord Harrogate should have resented this, it would have been no easy matter for his lordship to explain; but there was scorn, and anger too, in the glance which he shot at unconscious Jasper; while it was not without some embarrassment that he addressed a word or two of polite commonplace to Miss Gray. Then the governess and her pupil pursued their way to the house, and the rest of the party strolled on towards the pheasantry.