“Are you not the Sussex sun, Jilian?”
“Oh, cousin, how can you say such things? La, Miss Perkaby is singing; we must cease our chatter.”
Miss Hardacre spread her fan and screened the bold mortal from the glow of her luminous countenance. Richard could see a round white chin and a mass of auburn hair.
“I would rather hear you talk, Jilian. I cannot think why Aunt Letitia asked the girl to sing. She has a fine voice, though, but—not half so fine as yours.”
A gray eye peeped demurely over the ivory screen.
“Do you think so, cousin?”
“Of course I think so, Jilian.”
A loud burst of laughter came from the farther end of the room, marring the melody like an ass braying. It was Lot’s laugh, a blatant and self-assertive expression of merriment that seemed to stand in need of being passed through some refining sieve. Richard glanced at the gay coated gentlemen about the fire, a cordon of purple, red, and blue, and noticed that his cousin’s protuberant blue eyes appeared fixed upon Jilian and himself. Richard blushed as though all the ladies in the room were studying him. He stood up and drew a little apart from Miss Jilian as the Lady Letitia came sailing down upon them like a gorgeous galleon freighted with all the spices of India and the silks of China.
His aunt’s air of extreme amiability towards Miss Hardacre puzzled Jeffray not a little. She darted a look at him, seated herself beside the fair Jilian, and desired her nephew to go and talk to Mrs. Perkaby and her daughters. Richard departed in all innocence, leaving these instinctive and inveterate enemies together on the causeuse. They were soon chatting and smiling, sparring and feinting at each other with that admirable and hypocritical amiability that makes men marvel. The dowager’s keen eyes were subjecting Miss Hardacre’s person and toilet to a minute and insolent examination. She talked effusively the while to that young lady, a malicious innuendo or half-veiled snub in every sentence.
“I hope to take Richard to The Wells with me,” said the Lady Letitia, staring steadily in Miss Hardacre’s face. “My nephew is a generous lad, but very gauche and inexperienced. It is my wish that Richard should see what elegant and modish people are like. He is wasted—stifled—you must perceive, Miss Hardacre, in this quagmire of a county.”