events, she was remorsefully sympathetic in her mental attitude towards Mrs. Osborn, and being sure that she was frightened of her husband’s august relative, felt nervous herself because Lord Walderhurst bore himself with undated courtesy and kept his monocle fixed in his eye throughout the interview. If he had let it drop and allowed it to dangle in an unbiassed manner from its cord, Emily would have felt more comfortable, because she was sure his demeanour would have appeared a degree more encouraging to the Osborns.
“Are you glad to be in England again?” she asked Mrs. Osborn.
“I never was here before,” answered the young woman. “I have never been anywhere but in India.”
In the course of the conversation she explained that she had not been a delicate child, and also conveyed that even if she had been one, her people could not have afforded to send her home. Instinct revealed to Emily that she had not had many of the good things of life, and that she was not a creature of buoyant spirits. The fact that she had spent a good many hours of most of her young days in reflecting on her ill-luck had left its traces on her face, particularly in the depths of her slow-moving, black eyes.
They had come, it appeared, in the course of duty, to pay their respects to the woman who was to be their destruction. To have neglected to do so would have made them seem to assume an indiscreet attitude towards the marriage.
“They can’t like it, of course,” Lady Maria summed them up afterwards, “but they have made up their minds to lump it as respectably as possible.”
“I am so sorry for them,” said Emily.
“Of course you are. And you will probably show them all sorts of indiscreet kindnesses, but don’t be too altruistic, my good Emily. The man is odious, and the girl looks like a native beauty. She rather frightens me.”
“I don’t think Captain Osborn is odious,” Emily answered. “And she is pretty, you know. She is frightened of us, really.”
Remembering days when she herself had been at a disadvantage with people who were fortunate enough to be of importance, and recalling what her secret tremor before them had been, Emily was very nice indeed to little Mrs. Osborn. She knew from experience things which would be of use to her—things about lodgings and things about shops. Osborn had taken lodgings in Duke Street, and Emily knew the quarter thoroughly. Walderhurst watched her being nice, through his fixed eyeglass, and he decided that she had really a very good manner. Its goodness consisted largely in its directness. While she never brought forth unnecessarily recollections of the days when she had done other people’s shopping and had purchased for herself articles at sales marked 11-3/4_d_, she was interestingly free from any embarrassment in connection with the facts. Walderhurst, who had been much bored by himself and other people in time past, actually found that it gave a fillip to existence to look on at a woman who, having been one of the hardest worked of the genteel labouring classes, was adapting herself to the role of marchioness by the simplest of processes, and making a very nice figure at it too, in her entirely unbrilliant way. If she had been an immensely clever woman, there would have been nothing special in it. She was not clever at all, yet Walderhurst had seen her produce effects such as a clever woman might have laboured for and only attained by a stroke of genius. As, for instance, when she had met for the first time after her engagement, a certain particularly detestable woman of rank, to whom her relation to Walderhurst was peculiarly bitter. The Duchess of Merwold had counted the Marquis as her own, considering him fitted by nature to be the spouse of her eldest girl, a fine young woman with projecting teeth, who had hung fire. She felt Emily Fox-Seton’s incomprehensible success to be a piece of impudent presumption, and she had no reason to restrain the expression of her sentiments so long as she conveyed them by methods of inference and inclusion.
“You must let me congratulate you very warmly, Miss Fox-Seton,” she said, pressing her hand with maternal patronage. “Your life has changed greatly since we last saw each other.”
“Very greatly indeed,” Emily flushed frankly in innocent gratitude as she answered. “You are very kind. Thank you, thank you.”
“Yes, a great change.” Walderhurst saw that her smile was feline and asked himself what the woman was going to say next. “The last time we met you called to ask me about the shopping you were to do for me. Do you remember? Stockings and gloves, I think.”
Walderhurst observed that she expected Emily to turn red and show herself at a loss before the difficulties of the situation. He was on the point of cutting into the conversation and disposing of the matter himself when he realised that Emily was neither gaining colour nor losing it, but was looking honestly into her Grace’s eyes with just a touch of ingenuous regret.
“It was stockings,” she said. “There were some marked down to one and elevenpence halfpenny at Barratt’s. They were really quite good for the price. And you wanted four pairs. And when I got there they were all gone, and those at two and three were not the least bit better. I was so disappointed. It was too bad!”
Walderhurst fixed his monocle firmly to conceal the fact that he was verging upon a cynical grin. The woman was known to be the stingiest of small great persons in London, her economies were noted, and this incident was even better than many others society had already rejoiced over. The picture raised in the minds of the hearers of her Grace foiled in the purchase of stockings marked down to 1_s_. 11-1/2_d_. would be a source of rapture for some time to come. And Emily’s face! The regretful kindness of it, the retrospective sympathy and candid feeling! It was incredibly good!
“And she did it quite by accident!” he repeated to himself in his inward glee. “She did it quite by accident! She’s not clever enough to have done it on purpose. What a brilliantly witty creature she would be if she had invented it!”
As she had been able unreluctantly to recall her past upon this occasion, so she was able to draw for Mrs. Osborn’s benefit from the experience it had afforded her. She wanted to make up to her, in such ways as she could, for the ill turn she had inadvertently done her. As she had at once ranged herself as an aid on the side of Lady Agatha, so she ranged herself entirely without obtrusiveness on the side of the Osborns.
“It’s true that she’s a good sort,” Hester said when they went away. “Her days of being hard up are not far enough away to be forgotten. She hasn’t any affectation, at any rate. It makes it easier to stand her.”
“She looks like a strong woman,” said Osborn. “Walderhurst got a good deal for his money. She’ll make a strapping British matron.”
Hester winced and a dusky red shot up in her cheek. “So she will,” she sighed.
It was quite true, and the truer it was the worse for people who despairingly hung on and were foolish enough to hope against hope.
Chapter Eight
The marriage of Lady Agatha came first, and was a sort of pageant. The female writers for fashion papers lived upon it for weeks before it occurred and for some time after. There were numberless things to be written about it. Each flower of the garden of girls was to be described, with her bridesmaid’s dress, and the exquisite skin and eyes and hair which would stamp her as the beauty of her season when she came out. There yet remained five beauties in Lady Claraway’s possession, and the fifth was a baby thing of six, who ravished all beholders as she toddled into church carrying her sister’s train, aided by a little boy page in white velvet and point lace.
