His first visitor in his retirement that evening was not Honour, but Mrs Jardine, who believed honestly that she had a special gift for cheering the sick. Gerrard had always been her favourite of Honour's two persistent suitors, and though she could not well in so many words congratulate him on being left without a rival, there were a good many heartening things that she could and did say. After deprecating any possible embarrassment on his part by assuring him that she came not because she liked him, but because when one had a gift it was a duty to use it, and it was a privilege to turn a gay and too probably heartless occasion of this kind into a means of doing good, she passed to her main object with a suddenness which would have seemed to some a little abrupt.
"And you have not caught one glimpse of a certain young lady yet?" Nods and becks and a mysterious archness of expression pointed the question. "My dear Mr Gerrard, she is handsomer than ever--in her own style, of course; you may take an old woman's word for it."
"But where shall I find the old woman?" inquired Gerrard, in a desperate attempt to do what was expected of him.
Highly pleased, Mrs Jardine gave him a tap with her fan. "Oh, you quiet young men are just as naughty as the rest--with your compliments, indeed! But if I were to repeat to you what a little bird told me, you would never, never betray me?" Earnest assurances on Gerrard's part. "Well, then, I hear that Miss Cinnamond is not very happy at home!"
"I am sorry to hear it," said Gerrard mechanically.
Mrs Jardine looked a little nonplussed. "Of course it is very sad," she admitted. "But surely it has its brighter side? The fact is, the General and dear Lady Cinnamond are _everything_ to each other. There is really no place for the poor girl. I confess she has made her mother wear caps like other people--makes them for her herself, I believe--instead of that extraordinary Popish veil--so like a nun's, I call it--though even she has not been able to get her to do anything to her hair." Like most of her contemporaries, Mrs Jardine regarded it as almost indecent to display grey or white hair, and herself wore a "front" which could hardly be considered an attempt at deception, so transparently artificial was it.