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Erica listened, not without interest, for she knew that Leslie Cunningham was the recently elected member for East Mountshire, the eldest son of Sir Michael Cunningham. "We must come and find them," said Donovan; and together they went out into the garden. Here, on one of the broad, grassy terraces, under the shade of a copper-beech, was afternoon tea on a wicker table. Gladys was talking to Mr.
If it had not been for her mother who left her a small fortune of a thousand or so a year, Auriol would have been as penniless as her two married sisters. Her brother, Lord Vintrey, once a wastrel subaltern of Household Cavalry, and, after a dashing, redeeming war record, now an expensive Lieutenant-Colonel, ate up all the ready money that Lord Mountshire could screw out of his estates.
I might, she said, have had the politeness to send a line of condolence.... Well, I might: but whether to her or to Lord Mountshire, whose gout was famous in the early nineties, I did not know. Yes, I ought to have answered her letter.
Erica wandered about the shady Mountshire woods with Gladys and the children, and in the cool restfulness, in the stillness and beauty, got a firm hold on her lofty ideal, and rose about the petty vexations and small frictions which had been spoiling her life at Greyshot.
Anyhow he left the table with the impression that the Earl of Mountshire was the most powerful noble in England and that his hostess and her cousin, Lady Auriol, regarded the Royal Family as upstarts and only visited Buckingham Palace in order to set a good example to the proletariat. "I'm sure he does," said I, after summarizing Lady Verity-Stewart's monologue.
I've been much more of a father to her than that damned old ass Mountshire" Evadne, again; though for once in her life she had exercised restraint "and I hate to see her unhappy. She's a woman who ought to marry, hang it all, and bring fine children into the world. And her twenties won't last for ever to put it mildly.
Socially, as the rather wild-headed daughter of an impoverished and obscure Earl, she could do but little. She too was a poor intriguer. She could only demand with blatant vividness. Once on a flying visit to Lord Mountshire, she tried to interest him in the man whom, to her indignation, he persisted in styling her protege.
Why, the park trees are much browner than the Mountshire ones!" "We have been prophesying all manner of evil about your coming back," said Tom looking her over critically from head to foot. "I believe mother thought you would never come that the good Christians down at Greyshot having caught you would keep you, and even the chieftain was the least bit in the world uneasy."
And father and mother and Charles and Aunt Auriol are all potty." "And so am I," she declared, "for he's a dear. And they all say it's time for Aunt Auriol to settle down. So they wanted to get him here and fix him. Charles says he's a shy bird " "But," I interrupted, "you're talking of the family. Your Aunt Auriol has a father, Lord Mountshire." "He's an old ass," said Evadne.
She had little fortune; but she had position and an ancient name. Her father, the impoverished fourteenth Earl of Mountshire, and the thirtieth Baron of something else, refused to sit among the canaille of the present House of Peers.
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