Mark Robarts had now turned away, and his attention was suddenly arrested by the loud voice of Miss Dunstable who had stumbled across some very dear friends in her passage through the rooms, and who by no means hid from the public her delight upon the occasion.
“Well—well—well!” she exclaimed, and then she seized upon a very quiet-looking, well-dressed, attractive young woman who was walking towards her, in company with a gentleman. The gentleman and lady, as it turned out, were husband and wife. “Well—well—well! I hardly hoped for this.” And then she took hold of the lady and kissed her enthusiastically, and after that grasped both the gentleman’s hands, shaking them stoutly.
“And what a deal I shall have to say to you!” she went on. “You’ll upset all my other plans. But, Mary my dear, how long are you going to stay here? I go—let me see—I forget when, but it’s all put down in a book upstairs. But the next stage is at Mrs. Proudie’s. I shan’t meet you there, I suppose. And now, Frank, how’s the governor?”
The gentleman called Frank declared that the governor was all right—“mad about the hounds, of course, you know.”
“Well, my dear, that’s better than the hounds being mad about him, like the poor gentleman they’ve put into a statue. But talking of hounds, Frank, how badly they manage their foxes at Chaldicotes! I was out hunting all one day——”
“You out hunting!” said the lady called Mary.
“And why shouldn’t I go out hunting? I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Proudie was out hunting, too. But they didn’t catch a single fox; and, if you must have the truth, it seemed to me to be rather slow.”
“You were in the wrong division of the county,” said the gentleman called Frank.
“Of course I was. When I really want to practise hunting I’ll go to Greshamsbury; not a doubt about that.”