"It don"t feel like home," said Hephzibah, and then she suddenly burst into tears.
"Oh, my deary!" she sobbed, "And you so beautiful, and pale, and proud, and never saying a word, and they are none of them fit to black your boots."
"Oh, hush, hush, Hephzibah!" I said.
My voice calmed her. She looked round as though afraid that grandmamma would come in and scold her for crying.
"There! I am an old fool!" she whimpered. "But it is being so happy myself and knowing what real love is that makes me cry."
This picture of my dear old nurse as the heroine of a real love story was so pathetically comic that a lump, half tears, half laughter, rose in my own throat.
"I _am_ so glad you are happy, Hephzibah," I said, unsteadily. "And of course I am happy, too. Come--I will show you the beautiful chain Mr.
Gurrage gave me lately, and a set of new rings, a ruby, a sapphire, a diamond, each stone as big as a peanut."
Hephzibah had not lived with grandmamma for years without acquiring a certain tact. She spoke no more of things that could emotion us, and soon we parted, smiling grimly at each other.
But the sense of exaltation was gone.
I could fly a little, like a bird round a large aviary. The bars were there beyond.
VII
It was odious weather, the afternoon of the 15th. Our eight guns had arrived in time for tea, some with wives, some without--one with a playful, giddy daughter. Men predominated.
There were some two or three decent people from the county round. The remainder, commercial connections, friends of the past.
One terrible woman, with parted, plastered hair and an aggressive voice and rustling silks, dominated the conversation. She is the wife of the brother of the late Mr. Gurrage"s partner who "died youngish."
This couple come apparently every year to the best partridge drive.
"Dodd" is their name.
Mrs. Dodd was extremely ill at ease among the other ladies, but was determined to let them know that she considered herself their superior in every way.
At the moment when she was recounting, in a strident voice, the shortcomings of one of her local neighbors, the butler announced:
"Sir Antony Thornhirst."
Our ninth gun had arrived.
"So good of you to ask me," he said, as he shook hands, and his voice sounded like smooth velvet after the others. And for a minute there was a singing in my ears.
"Jolly glad to see you," Augustus bl.u.s.tered. "What beastly weather!
You motored over, I suppose?"
Sir Antony sat down by me.
I remembered the ways he would be accustomed to and did not introduce him to any one.
He had exchanged casual "How do you do"s" with the neighbors he knew.
I poured him out some tea.
"I don"t drink it," he said, "but give me some, and sugar, and cream, and anything that will take time to put in."
I laughed.
"It is very long since we met at Harley, and I began to think you were going to forget me again, Comtesse!"
"Is that why you came here?"
"Yes--and because they tell me your keeper can show at least a hundred and fifty brace of partridges each day!"
"Augustus was right, then."
"What about?"
"He said you would come because of the number of the birds. I--I--felt sure you would be engaged."
"Your note was not cordial nor cousinly, and I was engaged, but the attraction of the game, as Mr. Gurrage says, decided me."
His smile had never looked so mocking nor his eyes so kind.
"Might I trouble you for a second cup, please, Mrs. Gussie?" the female Dodd interrupted, loudly, from half across the room, "Mr.
McCormack is taking it over to you. And a little stronger this time, please. I don"t care for this new-fangled taste for weak tea--dish-water, I call it--only fit for the jaded digestions of worn-out worldly women."
"Who owns this fog-horn?" my kinsman whispered. "Will it come out shooting to-morrow? The game-book record will be considerably lower if so!"
"It won"t shoot; it will only lunch," I whispered back.
Somehow, my spirits had risen. I loved to sit and laugh there with--Antony. (I think of him as Antony, now we are cousins, I must remember.)
I poured out the blackest tea I could, and inadvertently put a lump of sugar into it. I am afraid I was not attending.
Mr. McCormack, a big, burly youth, with a red face and fearfully nervous manners, stood first on one foot, then on the other, while he waited for the cup, which, eventually, he took back to Mrs. Dodd.
All this time Antony was sitting talking to me in his delightfully lazy way, quite undisturbed by any one else in the room. He has exactly grandmamma"s manner of finding a general company simply furniture.
He was just telling an amusing story of the house in Scotland he had come from, when an explosion happened at the other side of the fireplace. Loud coughing and choking, mixed with a clatter of teaspoons and china--and, amid a terrified silence, the fog-horn exclaimed:
"Surely, Mrs. Gussie, I told you plain enough that sugar in my tea makes me sick."
I apologized as well as I could, and repaired my want of attention, and then I felt my other guests must claim me, so I whispered to Antony:
"Do go and talk to Lady Wakely, please. You are preventing me from doing my duty! I am listening to you instead."