"Fairly. Yes. I mean I do rather," confessed the hapless Muriel.
Enchanted castles are apt to conceal an ogress or two. Mrs. Neale felt disposed to let the Weare Grange live up to its reputation. Between her abrupt boredom and Muriel's timidity, the afternoon appeared interminable to Connie. She hated the white and draughty drawing-room. She hated the small gilt clock ticking in the corner. She hated the mixture of ceremony and discomfort, of wealth and squalor that characterized the house shared by Godfrey and his mother. The place seemed to be getting at her, making her feel vulgar and schoolgirlish. The thought of Clare and Godfrey riding together in the winter sunshine maddened her with jealousy.
But it was Muriel who relieved the situation.
After a longer pause than ever, she looked round the room and saw a single photograph on a table near the fire-place.
"Is that Mr. Neale when he was a little boy?" she asked in desperation.
That was enough for Mrs. Neale. Upon one subject alone could she be trusted to break her habitual silence, and Muriel's ingenuous questioning went direct to her heart. From the drawing-room to the smoking-room, from the smoking-room to the long gallery marched the procession of three, recapitulating pictorially and photographically the stupendous progress of Godfrey Neale from the nursery to Oxford, and from Oxford to the mastership of the Weare Grange and Mardlehammar. Connie, stumbling behind the other two, tripping over dogs and carpentering tools, grew full and more full of passionate resentment. When the riders appeared again by the terrace, so warm, so happy, so pleased with life and with themselves, Connie, who was neither warm nor happy, nor pleased, could bear it no longer.
"Well," snapped Mrs. Neale, with her stiff smile that seemed to creak from lack of use. "Good ride?"
"Ripping. Golden Girl went like a bird, and Miss Duquesne is a real sp—sportswoman."
Connie pushed her way past Muriel down the terrace steps.
"Mr. Neale, can I try?"