'No--oh _no!_' said Lucy, stumbling in. 'Give me my bag, please.'

The man gave it to her, and timidly looking round her she settled herself in the smallest s.p.a.ce and the remotest corner she could.

When the carriage rolled off, the lady in green looked out of window for a while at the dark flying fields and woods, over which the stars were beginning to come out.

'Are you a stranger in these parts, or do you know Benet's Park already?' she said presently to Lucy, who was next her, in a pleasant, nonchalant way.

'I have never been here before,' said Lucy, dreading somehow the sound of her own voice; 'but my husband is well acquainted with the family.'

She was pleased with her own phrase, and began to recover herself.

The lady said no more, however, but leant back and apparently went to sleep. The tall ladies presently did the same. Lucy's depression returned as the silence lasted. She supposed that it was aristocratic not to talk to people till you had been introduced to them. She hoped she would be introduced when they reached Benet's Park. Otherwise it would be awkward staying in the same house.

Then she fell into a dream, imagining herself with a maid--ordering her about deliciously--saying to the handsome footman, 'My maid has my wraps'--and then with the next jolt of the carriage waking up to the humdrum and unwelcome reality. And David might be as rich as anybody! Familiar resentments and cravings stirred in her, and her drive became even less of a pleasure than before. As for David, he spent the whole of it in lively conversation with the small dark man, beside the window.

The carriage paused a moment. Then great gates were swung back and in they sped, the horses stepping out smartly now that they were within scent of home. There was a darkness as of thick and lofty trees, then dim opening stretches of park; lastly a huge house, mirage-like in the distance, with rows of lighted windows, a crackling of crisp gravel, the sound of the drag, and a pomp of opening doors.

'Shall I take your bag, Madam?' said a magnificent person, bending towards Lucy, as, clinging to her possession, she followed the lady in green into the outer hall.

'Oh no, thank you! at least, shall I find it again?' said the frightened Lucy, looking in front of her at the vast hall, with its tall lamps and statues and innumerable doors.

'It shall be sent upstairs for you, Madam,' said the magnificent person gravely, and, as Lucy thought, severely.

She submitted, and looked round for David. Oh, where was he?

'This is a fine hall, isn't it?' said the lady in green beside her.

'Bad period--but good of its kind. What on earth do they spoil it for with those shocking modern portraits?'

Such a.s.surance--combined with such garments--in such a house--it was nothing short of a miracle!

CHAPTER III

'Now, Lavinia, do be kind to young Mrs. Grieve. She is evidently as shy as she can be.'

So spoke Lord Driffield, with some annoyance in his voice, as he looked into his wife's room after dressing for dinner.

'I suppose she can amuse herself like other people,' said Lady Driffield. She was standing by the fire warming a satin-shoed foot.

'I have told Williams to leave all the houses open to-morrow. And there's church, and the pictures. The Danbys and the rest of us are going over to Lady Herbart's for tea.'

A cloud came over Lord Driffield's face. He made some impatient exclamation, which was m.u.f.fled by his white beard and moustache, and walked back to his own room.

Meanwhile Lucy, in another corridor of the great house, was standing before a long gla.s.s, looking herself up and down in a tumult of excitement and anxiety.

She had just pa.s.sed through a formidable hour! In a great gallery, with polished floor, and hung with portraits of ancestral Driffields, the party from the station had found Lady Driffield, with five or six other people, who seemed to be already staying in the house. Though the butler had preceded them, no names but those of Lady Venetia Danby and Miss Danby had been announced; and when Lady Driffield, a tall effective-looking woman with a cold eye and an expressionless voice, said a short 'How do you do?' and extended a few fingers to David and his wife, no names were mentioned, and Lucy felt a sudden depressing conviction that no names were needed.

To the mistress of the house they were just two nonent.i.ties, to whom she was to give bed and board for two nights to gratify her husband's whims; whether their insignificant name happened to be Grieve, or Tompkins, or Johnson, mattered nothing.

So Lucy had sat down in a subdued state of mind, and was handed tea by a servant, while the Danbys--Colonel Danby, after his smoke in the dog-cart, following close on the heels of his wife and daughter--mixed with the group round the tea-table, and much chatter, combined with a free use of Christian names, liberal petting of Lady Driffield's Pomeranian, and an account by Miss Danby of an accident to herself in the hunting-field, filled up a half-hour which to one person, at least, had the qualities of a nightmare. David was talking to the lady in green--to whom, by the way, Lady Driffield had been distinctly civil. Once he came over to relieve Lucy from a waterproof which was on her knee, and to get her some bread and b.u.t.ter. But otherwise no one took any notice of her, and she fell into a nervous terror lest she should upset her cup, or drop her teaspoon, or scatter her crumbs on the floor.

Then at last Lord Driffield, who had been absent on some country business, which his soul loathed, had come in, and with the cordiality, nay, affection of his greeting to David, and the kindness of his notice of herself, little Lucy's spirits had risen at a bound. She felt instinctively that a protector had arrived, and even the formidable procession upstairs in the wake of Lady Driffield, when the moment at last arrived for showing the guests to their rooms, had pa.s.sed off safely, Lucy throwing out an agitated 'Thank you!' when Lady Driffield had even gone so far as to open a door with her own bediamonded hand, which had Mrs.

Grieve's plebeian appellations written in full upon the card attached to it.

And now? Was the dress nice? Would it do? Unluckily, since Lucy's rise in the social scale which had marked the last few years, the sureness of her original taste in dress had somewhat deserted her.

Her natural instinct was for trimness and closeness; but of late her ideals had been somewhat confused by a new and more important dressmaker with 'aesthetic' notions, who had been recommended to her by the good-natured and artistic wife of one of the College professors. Under the guidance of this expert, she had chosen a 'Watteau _sacque_' from a fashion-plate, not quite daring, little tradesman's daughter as she felt herself at bottom, to venture on the undisguised low neck and short sleeves of ordinary fashionable dress.

She said fretfully to herself that she could see nothing in this vast room. More and more candles did she light with a trembling hand, trusting devoutly that no one would come in and discover her with such an extravagant illumination. Then she tried each of the two long gla.s.ses of the room in turn. Her courage mounted. It _was_ pretty. The terra-cotta shade was _exquisite,_ and _no_ one could tell that the satin was cotton-backed. The flowing sleeves and the pleat from the shoulder gave her dignity, she was certain; and she had done her hair beautifully. She wished David would come in and see! But his room was across a little landing, which, indeed, seemed to be all their own, for it was shut off from the pa.s.sage they had entered from by an outer door. There was, however, more than one door opening on to the landing, and Lucy was so much afraid of her surroundings that she preferred to wait till he came.

Meanwhile--what a bedroom! Why, it was more gorgeous than any drawing-room she had ever entered. Every article of furniture was of old marqueterie, adapted to modern uses, the appointments of the writing-table were of solid silver--Lucy had eagerly ascertained the fact by looking at the 'marks'--and as for the _towels_, she simply could not have imagined that such things were made! Her little soul was in a whirl of envy, admiration, pride. What tales she would have to tell Dora when they got home!

'Are you ready?' said David, opening the door. 'I believe I hear people going downstairs.'

He came in arrayed in the new dress suit which became him as well as anything else; for he had a natural dignity which absorbed and surmounted any novelty of circ.u.mstance or setting, and was purely a matter of character, depending upon a mind familiar with large interests and launched towards ideal aims. He might be silent, melancholy, impracticable, but never meanly self-conscious. It had rarely occurred to anyone to pity or condescend to David Grieve.

Lucy looked at him with uneasy pride. Then she glanced back at her own reflection in the gla.s.s.

'What do you think of it?' she asked him, eagerly.

'Magnificent!' said David, with all the sincerity of ignorance--wishing, moreover, to make his wife pleased with herself. 'But oughtn't you to have gloves instead of those things?'

He pointed doubtfully to the mittens on her arms.

'Oh, David, don't say that!' cried Lucy, in despair. 'Miss Helby said these were the right things. It's to be like an old picture, don't you understand? And I haven't got any gloves but those I came in. Oh, don't be so disagreeable!'

She looked ready to cry. Poor David hastened to declare that Miss Helby must be right, and that it was all very nice. Then they blew out the candles and ventured forth.

'Lord Driffield says that Canon Aylwin is coming,' said David, examining some Hollar engravings on the wall of the staircase as they descended, 'and the Dean of Bradford, who is staying with him.

I shall be glad to see Canon Aylwin.'

His face took a pleased meditative look. He was thinking of Canon Aylwin's last volume of essays--of their fine scholarship, their delicate, unique qualities of style. As for Lucy, it seemed to her that all the princ.i.p.alities and powers of this world were somehow arraying themselves against her in that terrible drawing-room they were so soon to enter. She set her teeth, held up her head, and on they went.

Presently they found themselves approaching a gla.s.s door, which opened into the central hall. Beyond it was a crowd of figures and a buzz of talk, and at the door stood a tall person in black with white gloves, holding a silver tray, from which he presented David with a b.u.t.ton-hole. Then, with a manner at once suave and impersonal, he held open the door, and the husband and wife pa.s.sed through.

'Ah, my dear Grieve,' said Lord Driffield, laying his hand on David's shoulder, 'come here and be introduced to Canon Aylwin. I am delighted to have caught him for you.'

So David was swept away to the other side of the room, and Lucy was left forlorn and stranded. It seemed to her an immense party; there were at least eight or ten fresh faces beyond those she had seen already. And just as she was looking for a seat into which she might slip and hide herself, Lady Venetia Danby, who was standing near, playing with a huge feather fan and talking to a handsome young man, turned around by chance and, seeing the figure in the bright-coloured 'Watteau _sacque_,' involuntarily put up her eyegla.s.s to look at it. Instantly Lucy, conscious of the eyegla.s.s, and looking hurriedly round on the people near, was certain that the pleat from the shoulder and the mittens were irretrievably wrong and conspicuous, and that she had betrayed herself at once by her dress as an ignoramus and an outsider. Worst of all, the lady in green was in a _sacque_ too!--a shapeless yellow thing of the most untutored and detestable make. Mittens also! drawn laboriously over the hands and arms of an Amazon. Lucy glanced at Miss Danby beside her, then at a beautiful woman in pale pink across the room--at their slim waists, the careless _aplomb_ and grace with which the costly stuffs and gleaming jewels were worn, and the white necks displayed--and sank into a chair trembling and miserable. That the only person to keep her in countenance should be that particular person--that they two should thus fall into a cla.s.s together, by themselves, cut off from all the rest--it was too much! Then, by a quick reaction, some of her natural obstinacy returned upon her. She held herself erect, and looked steadily round the room.

'Mr. Edwardes--Mrs. Grieve,' said Lady Driffield's impa.s.sive voice, speaking, as it seemed to Lucy, from a great height, as the tall figure swept past her to introductions more important.

A young man bowed to Lucy, looked at her for a moment, then, pulling his fair moustache, turned away to speak to Miss Danby, who, in the absence of more stimulating suitors for her smiles, was graciously pleased to bestow a few of them on Lord Driffield's new agent.

'Whom are we waiting for?' said Miss Danby, looking round her, and slightly glancing at Lucy.

'Only the Dean, I believe,' said Mr. Edwardes, with a smile. 'I never knew Dean Manley less than half an hour late in _this_ house.'

A cold shiver ran through Lucy. Then they--she and David--had been all but the last, had all but kept the whole of this portentous gathering waiting for them.