'As she bears our name and comes from our place we can hardly deny the cousinship. In a few minutes, however, we shall know the worst.'
Philippa, dressed for dinner, was standing before the fire, tapping the fender impatiently with her foot, and playing with her fan. A handsome girl of three- or four-and-twenty: handsome, not pretty, if you please, nor lovely. By no means. Handsome, with a kind of beauty which no painter or sculptor would assign to Lady Venus, because it lacked softness; nor to Diana, because that huntress, chaste and fair, was country-bred, and Philippa was of the town—urban. The young lady was perfectly well satisfied with her own style of beauty. If she exaggerated a little its power, that is a common feminine mistake. The exaggeration brings to dress a moral responsibility. Philippa was dressed this evening in a creamy white silk, which had the effect of softening a face and manner somewhat cold and even hard. The young men of the period complained that Philippa was stand-offish. Certainly she did not commit the mistake, too common among girls, of plunging straight off into sympathetic interest with every young man. Philippa waited for the young men to interest her, if they could. Generally, they could not. And, while many girls listen with affected deference to the opinions of the young man, Philippa made the young man receive hers with deference. These plain facts show, perhaps, why Philippa, at twenty-four, was still free and unengaged.
In appearance she was tall—all young ladies who respect themselves are tall in these days: her features were clearly cut, if a little pronounced: her hazel eyes were intellectually bright, though cold: her hair, the least-marked feature, was of a common brown colour, but she treated it so as to produce a distinctive effect: her mouth was fine, though her lips were rather thin: her figure was correct, though Venus herself would have preferred more of it, and, perhaps, that more flexible. But it is the commonplace girl, we know, who runs to plumpness.
She was dressed with greater care than usual that evening, because people were coming, but not to dinner. The only guests at dinner were to be one Mr. Jagenal, the well known family solicitor, of Lincoln's Inn, and a certain far-off cousin, named Armorel Rosevean, from the Scilly Isles, and her companion and chaperon, one Mrs. Jerome Elstree—unknown.
'My dear,' her mother began, 'you are too desponding. Mr. Jagenal assured your father——' She dropped her voice again.
'Oh! He is an old bachelor. What does he know? Our cousin comes from Scilly. So did we. It does very well to talk of coming from Scilly, as if it was something grand, but I have been looking into a book about it. Old families of Scilly, we say. Why, they have never been anything but farmers and smugglers. And our cousin, I hear, is actually a small tenant-farmer—a flower-farmer—a kind of market-gardener! She grows daffodils and jonquils and anemones and snowdrops, and sells them. Very likely the daffodils on our table have come from her farm. Perhaps she will tell us about the price they fetch a dozen. And she will inform us at dinner how she counts the stalks and makes out the bills.'
'Absurd! She is an heiress. Mr. Jagenal says——'
'An heiress? How can she be an heiress?' Philippa repeated, with scorn. 'She inherits the lease of a little flower-farm. The people of Scilly are all quite, quite poor. My book says so. Some years ago the Scilly folk were nearly starving.'
'Your book must be wrong, Philippa. Mr. Jagenal says that the girl has a respectable fortune. When a man of his experience says that, he means——' Here her voice dropped again.
'Well; the island heiress will go back, I dare say, to her inheritance.'