At the conclusion of the service, the mail-phaetons, dog-carts, carriages, and other vehicles showed that some at least of the parishioners had a distance to come, which necessitated driving. The party from the Hall were scarcely a half-mile from the church, so that there was no need for taking out the carriage. The family, as a whole, were good pedestrians—‘The short walk was quite a pleasure,’ as Vanda told every one, ‘and it would have been absurd to take out the horses.’
When Lord Hexham returned to his family at Bruges, after a concluding week in London, in which to show himself to his clubs, and have a little social companionship with old friends and comrades, he took with him a letter from Mrs. Banneret, of so sympathetic and unaffectedly kind a nature, that Lady Hexham nearly relented. She would have been indeed more than human if she had not felt the least little bit of envy and jealousy of these people from a far country, who had entered into their labours, so to speak, for no other reason than the chance possession of more money than they knew what to do with. Hard, no doubt, did it seem to her, that while she and her girls had to stint and save, scarcely able to afford themselves decent frocks, the daughters of these _nouveaux riches_ should have their Paris gowns noticed in every fashion paper, and described as ‘confections,’ and so on, of the latest style. They were also seen at Ascot, royal Ascot, these new dwellers in their ancestral halls, their property in which, owing to the extravagance of one generation and the apathetic indifference of the next, had gradually declined, and was now lost to the family for ever.
However, his Lordship’s persistent advocacy of their claims to consideration gradually weakened her prejudices, finally inducing her to reply to Mrs. Banneret’s letter in manner approaching to the spirit in which it was written.
‘You know, my dear,’ he had said, in one of the discussions about ways and means which had followed his return to the peaceful home-life at Bruges, ‘it really was an immense relief our getting hold of such a lot of hard cash for poor old Hexham. It puts us and our credit in such a different position from what it has been for years.’