And until the dressing-gong sounded, a continuous teuf-teuf-teuf might
have been heard as, one after another, the cars whizzed up to the door.
Of course, in a troop of over thirty people, naturally some had kind
hearts and good manners, but the prevailing tone of this coterie of
crème de la crème was one of pure selfishness and blunt and material
brutality.
If you were rich and suited them, you were given a nickname probably,
and were allowed to play cards with them, and lose your money for their
benefit. If you were non-congenial you did not exist--that was all. You
might be sitting in a chair, but they only saw it and an empty
space--you did not even cumber their ground.
To do them justice, they preferred people of their own exalted station;
outsiders seldom made their way into this holy of holies, however rich
they were--unless, of course, they happened to be Mildred's lovers. That
situation for a man held special prerogatives, and was greatly coveted
by pretenders to this circle of grace.
Intellectual intelligence was not important. Some of the women of this
select company had been described by an agricultural duke who had stayed
there as having just enough sense to come in out of the rain.
Sir Patrick Fitzgerald occasionally departed from the strict limits of
this set in the big parties--especially lately, when money was becoming
scarcer, several financial friends who could put him on to good things
had been included, the result being that Lady Harrowfield had not always
shed the light of her countenance upon the festivities.
Lord Harrowfield drew most of his income from a great, populous
manufacturing city in the north, so neither he nor his countess had need
to smile at mere wealth.
And Lady Harrowfield had said, frankly, "Let me know if it is a utility
party, Patrick, or for just ourselves, because if you are going to have
these creatures I sha'n't come."
This time, however, she had not been so exigent. It happened to suit
some other arrangements of hers to spend Whitsuntide at Beechleigh, so
she consented to chaperon Morella Winmarleigh without asking for a list
of the guests.
Hector had never conformed to any special set; he went here, there, and
everywhere, and was welcomed by all. But somehow, until this occasion,
Beechleigh had never seen him within its gates, although Lady
Harrowfield had praised him, and Mildred had sighed for him in vain.
He saw the situation at a glance when he came into the saloon: Josiah
and Theodora sitting together, neglected by every one but Barbara. They
could not have been more than half an hour in the house, he knew, for he
had found out when the trains got in.