AURA is a dear woman, and a shining example to us all. But clever? No, my dear, Laura is not clever."
"You don't call the Duchess stupid?"
"Good heavens, no! But I've known many a stupid woman make a better thing of her girls' lives than Laura has managed to do. Look at the two elder daughters?"
"You mean Lady Lettice and Lady Susie?"
"Of course I do. They both made very bad marriages; Lettice to that pompous young M.P. from the north; and Susie, who is really very pretty, is in India, married to a penniless soldier."
"What an odd thing."
"All their mother's fault! Yet not only is she a duchess, and that still counts—men are such snobs—but she's got this splendid old place in which she could have given a series of such delightful 'young' parties. I don't mean the sort of thing that's going on this time. Private theatricals, matrimonially speaking, are never any use, and just think of the 'detrimentals' who are here just now!"
"Perhaps Lady Hilda will do better for herself?"
"She may. But I shall be very surprised if she does. She's a clever little thing"
"Pretty too," interjected the other lady.
"Pretty in a way; piquante one would have called it in old days; and that isn't beauty, my dear! It seems to me that Laura falls between two stools. Her daughters aren't the demure, old-fashioned girls that some modern men fancy, and neither are they like the naughty, bold young minxes that carry off all the elder sons."
"Young men are so spoilt nowadays. I shouldn't care to have the Duke for a father-in-law—"
"Neither should I!" And then both ladies tittered.
"Listeners never hear any good of themselves."
The Duchess ruefully reminded herself of the old saying, as she unwillingly overheard the short conversation between two of her guests; one, Lady Brislington, known since her girlhood, and the other, Mrs. Chichester, a new acquaintance who was a friend of Lady Brislington. The gossips were sunning themselves on the terrace of the Castle, and a large screen had been put up to shelter them from the east wind. Their hostess, meaning to join them, had slipped through the long French window of one of the smaller sitting-rooms, just behind the screen, when her attention had been caught by the sound of her own name.
For a few moments she stood quite still, scarcely breathing. It would be so unpleasant for them all three were she to be discovered! But at last, feeling mortified, and not a little hurt, she cautiously pushed open the French window, and stepped indoors again.
Was it really true that she had been a foolish, neglectful mother? Could she have done anything to prevent Lettice, her cherished eldest child, from marrying that tiresome Gerald Armitage? As for Susie—well, there had been a tragic little episode known only to her, Susie's mother, and to Susie herself, and it was natural that the girl's heart had been caught at the rebound by that fine, if penniless, young fellow, Captain Geoffrey Brentlaw, V.C.
And then, for she was a very honest woman, honest with herself as few women are, the Duchess admitted, with a sigh, that she might in very truth have done a very great deal more than she had done, especially with regard to her eldest daughter. She could have filled the Castle with what those two worldly women would call "the right kind of young man." But, like most modern mothers who still feel themselves quite young as they approach middle age, she had never thought of her little Lettice as "grown up" till Lettice had already lost her heart to the man the Duke called "that pompous prig." Also, the Duchess was very much devoted wife as well as devoted mother; and both she and the Duke, in their very different ways, were unworldly, neither inclined to fix an eye on the main chance, especially where their children were concerned.
Anxiously the Duchess ran over in her mind the names of the young men who were now staying in the Castle in connection with a charity performance of that old favourite, "A Pantomime Rehearsal," which was to be acted in what was called the big ballroom in about ten days. With a certain shock of surprise she realised that not one of them could be regarded as being, matrimonially speaking, eligible. When she had talked the party over with her son Algy, all she had stipulated was that the young men invited for what must be an exceptionally long visit should be "nice."
And nice they certainly all were—simple, well-behaved, pleasant, young fellows, but not an "elder son" among them!