Chapter Ten.
Tattle and Tragedy.
When half-an-hour later I sat drinking tea en famille with Lady Stretton and her daughter, I confess I felt ill at ease, notwithstanding their light and pleasant gossip.
“I really don’t think you are looking very well, Stuart,” the old lady was saying, as the footman handed her her cup. “Town life does not agree with you, perhaps.”
“No,” I said. “I always prefer the country.”
“So do I. If it were not for dear Dora’s sake, I think I should live at Blatherwycke altogether.”
“You would very soon tire of it, mother,” her daughter laughed. “You know very well when we are down there you are always wanting to see your friends in town.” Lady Stretton looked always stiff and formal in her rich satins. Nearly sixty, with a profusion of white hair and a rather red face, she brimmed over with corpulence, and still preserved some remnant of the beauty that was half sunken beneath her grossness. To me she was always complimentary and caressing. But she said “My dear” to everybody, spoke in a high-pitched voice, and played the child with that doleful languor characteristic of corpulent persons. She loved secrets, made everything a matter of confidence, talked gossip, and was fond of speaking in one’s ear. She pitied others; pitied herself; she bewailed her misfortunes and her physical ills. Nothing could have been more pathetic than her constant attacks of indigestion. She took a very real interest in the career of her friends, for it was part of her completeness to be the centre of a set of successful people.
“We are going to Blatherwycke the day after to-morrow,” she said. “The hunting this season has been excellent. Have you been out yet?”