“Thank you,” said Polly, taking the key. “I was anxious to see for myself how many of Lady Bab’s vases and bowls are left to us.” She looked very tall and very fair, and rather terrifying as she confronted Sir Giles. They were in the hall of Overshott, the doors of which stood wide open to the faint September breeze and the hot September sunshine, and Sir Giles, who was going to luncheon at The Sabines, was putting on a thin dust-coat in preparation for the drive. He jumped at the reference to the crackle.
“I suppose Mrs. Brownlow has told you that I have removed a piece or two,” he said, bungling with the sleeves of his dust-coat, for lack of the daughterly hitch at the back of the collar which would have induced the refractory garment to go on.
“Mrs. Brownlow has told me that a baker’s dozen of bowls and vases and plaques and teapots—the cream of the collection, in fact,” said Polly, “are adorning Mrs. Osborne’s drawing-room.”
“Confound it!” said Sir Giles, as he struggled with his garment. “The crockery isn’t entailed; and if I desire to give a teapot to a friend I suppose I can do as I like with my own! And—I can’t keep the cart waiting. Fanchon won’t stand.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Polly, becoming cool as Sir Giles grew warm. “Only—if you are going on giving teapots to friends, and there is a hamper of china at this moment under the seat of the cart—I think it would be advisable to change the name of the Crackle-Room. One might call it the ‘Plundered Apartment,’ or something equally appropriate.”
“Call it what you choose, my dear.” Sir Giles was now recovering from the shock of the unexpected onslaught. “I have said the crackle is no more entailed than Overton Foxshott or the Lowndes Square house—or anything else that at present I may call my own. If I were a younger man, I might plunder my mother and disappoint my promised wife for the pleasure of making a considerable present of jewelry to a woman ten years my senior. As it is——”
Sir Giles did not finish the speech, but strode angrily out and got into the cart, and gave Polly a short, gruff “Good-bye,” as he drove away, leaving that puzzled young woman on the doorsteps.
“‘Plunder my mother and disappoint my promised wife.... Present of jewelry ... a woman ten years his senior.’... Can Cis have been giving jewels to Mrs. Osborne?” Polly wondered. The course of her love affair had run so smoothly that she was at a loss to account for the pain at her heart and the fever in her veins. Sir Giles’s complaint she diagnosed correctly. He was jealous ... jealous of Cis! He was angry with Polly. He had reminded her that he could do as he liked with his own, that the county might call her an heiress, but the county had no certain grounds for the assertion. Jealous and angry, the dear, cheery Dad. Because Cis chose to loll upon the grass at the skirts of a woman who was his senior by many more years than ten. Polly ordered round Kiss-me-Quick, and rode over to Hengs Hall, pondering these things in her mind. Much had been revealed to her, but it was for Lady Smithgill to lift the last corner of the veil and disclose to Cis’s future wife the true meaning of Sir Giles’s reference to jewels.