“I’m so very pleased you’ve come, Frank,” exclaimed the elder lady, starting forward enthusiastically as she put down her work, “and I’m delighted to meet your friend. I have heard of you both several times through your father. I wonder he doesn’t exchange his living with some one. He seems so very unwell of late. I’ve always thought that Harwell doesn’t suit him.”
“He has tried on several occasions, but the offers he has had are in towns in the North of England, so he prefers Berkshire,” I answered.
“Well,” she said, inviting us both to be seated in comfortable wicker chairs standing near, “it is really very pleasant to see you again. Mary has spoken of you, and wondered how you were so many, many times.”
“I’m sure,” I said, “the pleasure is mutual.”
Dick, after I had introduced him to Mrs Blain, had seated himself at Mary’s side and was chatting to her, while I, leaning back in my chair, looked at this woman before me and remembered the object of my visit. There was certainly nothing in her face to arouse suspicion. She was perhaps fifty, with just a sign of grey hairs, dark-eyed, with a nose of that type one associates with employers of labour. A trifle inclined to embonpoint, she was a typical, well-preserved Englishwoman of motherly disposition, even though by birth she was of one of the first Shropshire families, and in the days of Shenley she had been quite a prominent figure in the May flutter of London. I had liked her exceedingly, for she had shown me many kindnesses. Indeed, she had distinctly favoured the match between Mary and myself, although her husband, a bustling, busy man, had scouted the idea. This Mary herself had told me long ago in those dreamy days of sweet confidences. The thought that she was in any way implicated in the mysterious affair under investigation seemed absolutely absurd, and I laughed within myself.
She was dressed, as she always had dressed after luncheon, in black satin duchesse, a quiet elegance which I think rather created an illusion that she was stout, and as she arranged her needlework aside in order to chat to me, she sighed as matronly ladies are wont to sigh during the drowsy after-luncheon hours.
From time to time I turned and laughed with Mary as she gaily sought my opinion on this and on that. She was dressed in dark blue serge trimmed with narrow white braid, her sailor hat cast aside lying on the grass, a smart river costume of a chic familiar to me in the fashion-plates of the ladies’ papers. As she lay back, her head pillowed on the cushion, there was in her eyes that coquettish smile, and she laughed that ringing musical laugh as of old.
A boatful of merrymakers went by, looking across, and no doubt envying us our ease, for sculling out there in the blazing sun could scarcely be a pleasure. Judging from their appearance they were shop-assistants making the best of the Thursday early-closing movement—a movement which happily gives the slaves of suburban counters opportunity for healthful recreation. The boat was laden to overflowing, and prominent in the bows was the inevitable basket of provisions and the tin kettle for making tea.
“It’s too hot, as yet, to go out,” Mary said, watching them. “We’ll go later.”
“Very well,” Dick answered. “I shall be delighted. I love the river, but since my Cambridge days I’ve unfortunately had but little opportunity for sculling.”