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A world in which her interest strangely persisted. "What did you wear at the country club dance last night?" she would ask. "A rose-colored chiffon over yellow. It gives the oddest effect, like an Ophelia rose." Or: "At the Mainwarings? George or Albert?" "The Alberts." "Did they ever have any children?" One day she told her about not going to Newport, and was surprised to see Elinor troubled.
The doctor's wife, who lived at the opposite side of the street, gazed furtively and enviously from behind her muslin blinds. The baker and the butcher neglected their usual morning orders; and Hannah, the Mainwarings' servant, felt herself, as she expressed it, all of a tremble from top to toe.
He extracted one in Nancy Smallwood's sprawling handwriting, and glanced through it again to make sure. "Dine 8 o'clock and go on to Mainwarings' dance afterwards. . . . Do come, if you can. . . ." Vane, placing it on the table in front of him, bowed to it profoundly. "We might," he remarked to Binks, "almost have it framed."
Hugh Mainwaring, the sole heir to the family estate, soon after the death of his father, some twenty-five years previous to this time, became weary of the monotony of his English homelife, and, resolved upon making his permanent home in one of the large eastern cities of the United States and embarking upon the uncertain and treacherous seas of speculation in the western world, had sold the estate which for a number of generations had been in the possession of the Mainwarings, and had come to America.
"It is unnecessary to give names," she answered, coldly; "but had the Mainwarings of London known the facts which I know, they would never have crossed the water to take part in the farce which was enacted here yesterday. There are Mainwarings with better right and title to this estate than they, as they will soon learn."
At this moment Primrose came into the room, and Miss Martineau, judging that she might best serve her cause by retiring from the scene of action, went away. Mr. Danesfield did not pay a long visit. He had known the Mainwarings, although not very intimately, for years. He was a good-hearted, kind, and very busy man, and during their mother's lifetime he had taken but little notice of the girls.
"And I'm told the Mainwarings at Dillsborough are very nice people," said Mrs. Morton, who knew that Mr. Mainwaring at any rate came from a good family. "I suppose they ought to call first. I never saw them in my life. Reginald Morton, you know, is living at Hoppet Hall in Dillsborough." "You don't mean to say you wish to ask him to this house?" "I think I ought.
"Do you mean to say that it is a trait of the entire Mainwaring family, or only of this branch in particular?" he inquired, somewhat amused. "All the Mainwarings are noted for their worship of the golden god," she replied, with a low musical laugh; "but Ralph Mainwaring's love of money is almost a monomania.
That night she dreamt of the Mainwarings; dreamt that she saw Daisy's piteous little face when she was turned away from her gates; dreamt again a brighter dream, that Jasmine had her arms round her neck, and was calling her mother; that Primrose, with none of her sweet dignity abated, was smiling at her, and saying gratefully, "I accept your kindness; I will gladly take your money; I will come and live with you at Shortlands, and be to you as a daughter."
"And I was nearly drowned in the 'Connaught." The lawyer looked at him keenly. "And the two combined have finished you off." "Oh! no. I'm reserving my final effort for the third. I'll get that at the Mainwarings'." He lifted his glass and let the ruby light glint through his port. "Why do we struggle, Jimmy? Why, in Heaven's name, does anybody ever do anything but drift?
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