"One detail of the story of old Doby's meerschaum,"Westholt said, "pleased me enormously.She managed to convey to him--without hurting his aged feelings or overwhelming him with embarrassment--that if he preferred a clean churchwarden or his old briarwood, he need not feel obliged to smoke the new pipe.He could regard it as a trophy.Now, how did she do that without filling him with fright and confusion, lest she might think him not sufficiently grateful for her present?
But they tell me she did it, and that old Doby is rapturously happy and takes the meerschaum to bed with him, but only smokes it on Sundays--sitting at his window blowing great clouds when his neighbours are coming from church.It was a clever girl who knew that an old fellow might secretly like his old pipe best.""It was a deliciously clever girl," said Lord Dunholm.
"One wants to know and make friends with her.We must drive over and call.I confess, I rather congratulate myself that Anstruthers is not at home.""So do I," Westholt answered."One wonders a little how far he and his sister-in-law will `foregather' when he returns.He's an unpleasant beggar."A few days later Mrs.Brent, returning from a call on Mrs.
Charley Jenkins, was passed by a carriage whose liveries she recognised half way up the village street.It was the carriage from Dunholm Castle.Lord and Lady Dunholm and Lord Westholt sat in it.They were, of course, going to call at the Court.Miss Vanderpoel was beginning to draw people.She naturally would.She would be likely to make quite a difference in the neighbourhood now that it had heard of her and Lady Anstruthers had been seen driving with her, evidently no longer an unvisitable invalid, but actually decently clothed and in her right mind.Mrs.Brent slackened her steps that she might have the pleasure of receiving and responding gracefully to salutations from the important personages in the landau.She felt that the Dunholms were important.There were earldoms AND earldoms, and that of Dunholm was dignified and of distinction.
A common-looking young man on a bicycle, who had wheeled into the village with the carriage, riding alongside it for a hundred yards or so, stopped before the Clock Inn and dismounted, just as Mrs.Brent neared him.He saw her looking after the equipage, and lifting his cap spoke to her civilly.
"This is Stornham village, ain't it, ma'am?" he inquired.
"Yes, my man." His costume and general aspect seemed to indicate that he was of the class one addressed as "my man,"though there was something a little odd about him.
"Thank you.That wasn't Miss Vanderpoel's eldest sister in that carriage, was it?""Miss Vanderpoel's----" Mrs.Brent hesitated."Do you mean Lady Anstruthers?""I'd forgotten her name.I know Miss Vanderpoel's eldest sister lives at Stornham--Reuben S.Vanderpoel's daughter.""Lady Anstruthers' younger sister is a Miss Vanderpoel, and she is visiting at Stornham Court now." Mrs.Brent could not help adding, curiously, "Why do you ask?""I am going to see her.I'm an American."Mrs.Brent coughed to cover a slight gasp.She had heard remarkable things of the democratic customs of America.It was painful not to be able to ask questions.
"The lady in the carriage was the Countess of Dunholm,"she said rather grandly."They are going to the Court to call on Miss Vanderpoel.""Then Miss Vanderpoel's there yet.That's all right.
Thank you, ma'am," and lifting his cap again he turned into the little public house.
The Dunholm party had been accustomed on their rare visits to Stornham to be received by the kind of man-servant in the kind of livery which is a manifest, though unwilling, confession.The men who threw open the doors were of regulation height, well dressed, and of trained bearing.The entrance hall had lost its hopeless shabbiness.It was a complete and picturesquely luxurious thing.The change suggested magic.The magic which had been used, Lord Dunholm reflected, was the simplest and most powerful on earth.Given surroundings, combined with a gift for knowing values of form and colour, if you have the power to spend thousands of guineas on tiger skins, Oriental rugs, and other beauties, barrenness is easily transformed.
The drawing-room wore a changed aspect, and at a first glance it was to be seen that in poor little Lady Anstruthers, as she had generally been called, there was to be noted alteration also.In her case the change, being in its first stages, could not perhaps be yet called transformation, but, aided by softly pretty arrangement of dress and hair, a light in her eyes, and a suggestion of pink under her skin, one recalled that she had once been a pretty little woman, and that after all she was only about thirty-two years oldThat her sister, Miss Vanderpoel, had beauty, it was not necessary to hesitate in deciding.Neither Lord Dunholm nor his wife nor their son did hesitate.A girl with long limbs an alluring profile, and extraordinary black lashes set round lovely Irish-blue eyes, possesses physical capital not to be argued about.
She was not one of the curious, exotic little creatures, whose thin, though sometimes rather sweet, and always gay, high-pitched young voices Lord Dunholm had been so especially struck by in the early days of the American invasion.Her voice had a tone one would be likely to remember with pleasure.
How well she moved--how well her black head was set on her neck! Yes, she was of the new type--the later generation.