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Lethbury, almost at once, had expressed a wish to rechristen it: she fluctuated between Muriel and Gladys, deferring the moment of decision like a lady wavering between two bonnets. But Lethbury was unyielding. In the general surrender of his prejudices this one alone held out. "But Jane is so dreadful," Mrs. Lethbury protested. "Well, we don't know that she won't be dreadful.
Petter to see her home, and, after a leave-taking which was a little more effusive than was usual with her, drove herself to Lethbury. If the sorrel horse had behaved badly in the early part of that afternoon, he was punished for it in the early part of that evening, for he completely broke all previous records of time made between the Squirrel Inn and Lethbury.
But you got the better of him that time, and did it well, too." In his admiration of the feat he had witnessed, the credit of which he gave entirely to his old and well-tried fiancée, Lanigan forgot for the moment his plan for the benefit of Lethbury.
"He...he said...that we...had never understood Jane... or appreciated her..." The final syllables were lost in her handkerchief, and she left him marvelling at the mechanism of a woman. After that, Lethbury faced the future with an undaunted eye.
She was overheard to jeer at her nurse for not knowing when the Saxon Heptarchy had fallen, and she alternately dazzled and depressed Mrs. Lethbury by the wealth of her chronological allusions. She showed no interest in the significance of the facts she amassed: she simply collected dates as another child might have collected stamps or marbles.
Late in the afternoon she entered the library, so breathless and inarticulate that he scented a catastrophe. "I've done it!" she cried. "Done what?" "Told him." She nodded toward the door. "He's just gone. Jane is out, and I had a chance to talk to him alone." Lethbury pushed a chair forward and she sank into it. "What did you tell him? That she is not always " Mrs. Lethbury lifted a tragic eye.
Tippengray," said his hostess, "but Lanigan Beam said he had seen you and Miss Rose walking across the fields to Lethbury, and so they asked him to go. I hope they'll be back to dinner, but there's no knowing, and so I put in a basket of sandwiches and things to keep them from starving before they get home." Miss Calthea was quite surprised.
Nothing was left of the house but the foundations, and on these the owner felt no desire to build again. He departed from the Lethbury neighborhood and never came back. When Mr.
"That," said Lethbury judicially, "encourages me to infer that you ought to be, and that, consequently, you've been giving yourself the unusual pleasure of doing something I shouldn't approve of." She met this with an almost solemn directness. "No," she said. "You won't approve of it. I've allowed for that." "Ah," he exclaimed, setting down his liqueur-glass.
A few duller girls found her interesting, and one or two young men came to the house with the object of meeting other young women; but she was rapidly becoming one of the social supernumeraries who are asked out only because they are on people's lists. The blow was bitter to Mrs. Lethbury; but she consoled herself with the idea that Jane had failed because she was too clever.
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