"As often as you wish," she answered. "You have the advantage of proximity, at least."
The next month, to Croyden, went pleasantly enough. He was occupied with getting the household machinery to run according to his ideas--and still retain Moses and Josephine, who, he early discovered, were invaluable to him; in meeting the people worth knowing in the town and vicinity, and in being entertained, and entertaining--all very quietly and without ostentation.
He had dined, or supped, or played Bridge at all the houses, had given a few small things himself, and ended by paying off all scores with a garden party at Clarendon, which Mrs. Carrington had managed for him with exquisite taste (and, to him, amazing frugality)--and, more wonderful still, with an entire effacement of _self_. It was Croyden's party throughout, though her hand was at the helm, her brain directed--and Hampton never knew.
And the place _had_ looked attractive; with the house set in its wide sweep of velvety lawn amid great trees and old-fashioned flowers and hedges. With the furniture cleaned and polished, the old china scattered in cupboard and on table, the portraits and commissions freshly dusted, the swords glistening as of yore.
And in that month, Croyden had come to like Hampton immensely. The absence, in its society, of all attempts at show, to make-believe, to impress, to hoodwink, was refreshingly novel to him, who, hitherto, had known it only as a great sham, a huge affectation, with every one striving to outdo everyone else, and all as hollow as a rotten gourd.
He had not got used, however, to the individual espionage of the country town--the habit of watching one's every movement, and telling it, and drawing inferences therefrom--inferences tinctured according to the personal feelings of the inferer.
He learned that, in three weeks, they had him "taken" with every eligible girl in town, engaged to four and undecided as to two more. They busied themselves with his food,--they nosed into his drinks, his cigars, his cigarettes, his pipes,--they bothered themselves about his meal hours,--they even inspected his wash when it hung on the line! Some of them, that is. The rest were totally different; they let every one alone. They did not intrude nor obtrude--they went their way, and permitted every one to go his.