At this point the other guests began to arrive, and Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright was forced to abandon her dialogue with young Restormel. She introduced him rather perfunctorily to one or two of the new arrivals, taking pains to slur over his name until she should have the opportunity of explaining his identity quietly to them at dinner or afterwards; then she turned to her hospitable duties, and Jack Hoope-Arkwright carried off his friend into one of the windows, where they stood laughing and talking together while the guests gradually gathered. Then, after a few moments, Ivor Restormel and his host came back towards the hearth to look at some photograph or ornament that stood on the primitive oak table that stood close by, and thus it was that they were once more close at the hostess’s side when at last, in a significant pause, the butler re-entered. His appearance suggested an archbishop of sporting tendencies, and he evidently cultivated a nice sense of drama. His voice boomed sonorous as he announced:
Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright moved forward a step or two.
Minute but majestic, the Lady Gundred Darnley proceeded up the room, panoplied in perfections, and giving exactly the proper amount of smiles, of exactly the proper kind, in exactly the proper way, to all the proper people. At her heels came Kingston, but nobody cared to look twice at him. Lady Gundred was the star of the evening; as she entered, she had the double consciousness of not only conferring great pleasure, but of conferring it in the handsomest and most ungrudging manner. For in the plenitude of her generosity she had decided that it was her duty not to fob off poor, kind Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright’s dinner with one of her second-best frocks; and now she reaped the reward of her efforts in the general gaze of delight that greeted her appearance in one of her smartest gowns, looking incredibly crisp and young in a beautifully-built harmony of pale blue and pale gold. The frock set the crown upon the favour of her coming. It was, indeed, very rarely that the Darnleys dined out in the neighbourhood of Brakelond, and therefore Gundred was the more ready to emphasize the approval that her coming was to bestow on Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright in the eyes of all the county. Dear woman, how good she had been about that bazaar! how loyally she had turned away her Liberal gardeners! She well deserved not only to be dined with, but to be dined with in one of one’s decent gowns. And then one might ask her to tea at Brakelond, and show her the pictures. Gundred showed herself sweet and kind in the highest degree, as Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright made her welcome. Her manner always had a tranquil friendliness and a grace so instinct with placidity that only the most discerning could have discerned her underlying pride, in her demeanour’s very negation of pride. Here and there, perhaps, an acute onlooker might guess that her gentleness was founded on an intense arrogance unsuspected even by its possessor, on a self-esteem so tremendous as to have passed beyond all hint of self-assertion into a Nirvana of apparent unself-consciousness. An ingenious friend in London, indeed, had once said that, though Gundred’s manner and signature unfailingly wore the proper style of ‘Gundred Darnley,’ yet that, reading between the lines, both of manner and signature, one could always see that it really ran, ‘Gundred March and Brakelond.’ However, her pride was far too cardinal a point of doctrine to be made the theme of declamation; Gundred never obtruded it, never lowered its dignity by insisting on it, never allowed it to make her offensive, except in minute and subtle ways. Now, as she pressed Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright’s hand and commended her kindness, the hostess felt that never had she met anyone so pleasant and cordial and delightfully unaffected.