The Milverley ladies, though acquainted with most of the neighbouring gentry, had never been intimate with any. The gulf that lay between Milverley and more modest establishments was too great to allow of anything approaching a free exchange of hospitality; and although the 5th Earl had been affable to his neighbours, and Serena meticulous in the observances of civility, it was generally felt that a dinner or an evening party at Milverley called for no reciprocal invitation. On hunting days, if the last point had carried him far from Milverley, it was not unusual for his lordship to take his pot-luck in the house of some hunting acquaintance. As often as not, he would have his daughter with him, the pair of them muddied to the eyebrows; and no guests, it was agreed, could have been less haughty, or easier to entertain. But after being passed from footman to footman on the way up the Grand Stairway at Milverley, traversing several saloons, being received in the Long Drawing-room by the Lady Serena, and sitting down to his lordship’s notion (genially expressed) of “just a neat, plain dinner”, there were few ladies with minds of so lofty an order that they could contemplate without an inward shudder any formal return of such hospitality.
When the stepmother and daughter took up their residence at the Dower House, a good deal of diffidence was felt by the well-bred: and all but pushing persons of no sensibility waited to see what attitude they would assume towards their neighbours before thrusting upon them civilities which might be unwelcome.
“With the result,” said Serena, fully alive to the scruples operating on the minds of the delicate, “that we are left to the mercy of the Ibsleys, and that odious Laleham woman, my dear Fanny! Oh, I must tell you that I came smash up against Mrs Orrell in Quenbury this morning, and taxed her openly with neglect! You know that unaffected way she has! She told me, with such a twinkle, that old Lady Orrell had said to her that she hoped she would not be in a hurry to leave cards on us, for that would be lowering herself to Lady Laleham’s level! You may imagine how I roared!”
“Oh, did you tell her how happy we should be to receive her?”
“To be sure I did! But you would have been shocked, Fanny! We enjoyed a delightful gossip, and made out between us that Lady Laleham’s beginnings must have been wholly vulgar! Don’t eat me! I know how much you affect her society!”
“Now, Serena—! You know very well—! But what is one to do? Sir Walter Laleham’s having been a friend of your dear Papa’s makes it so impossible for us to snub her! I can’t conceive how he came to marry her!”
“Oh, he was all to pieces, and she had a great fortune, or was a great heiress, or some such thing! I pity her daughters: she has them in complete subjection, and, depend upon it, she means them all to contract brilliant marriages! She may succeed with Emily, but I defy her to foist the freckled one on to anything better than a baronet.”
“How can you, Serena?” protested Fanny.
“I’m sure I could not!”
“No, pray be serious! I daresay Anne will be quite as pretty as Emily in a year or two, and I do think Emily quite delightfully pretty, don’t you? Only I do hope she may not be persuaded into doing anything she doesn’t quite like.”
“I’ll tell you what, Fanny: I shouldn’t wonder at it if all this toad-eating is directed to that end! Lady Laleham hopes to jockey you into sponsoring Emily!”
“Oh, no, surely she could not? Besides, there is no need! She seems to know everyone, and to go everywhere!”
“Franked by the Lalehams! Yes, but she’s as shrewd as she can hold together, and knows very well she is only tolerated. She is the kind of person one is obliged to invite to a rout-party, but never to a dinner for one’s friends!”
Fanny admitted the truth of this, but said: “Yet her manners are not at all vulgar, and she doesn’t precisely toad-eat one.”
“Her manners have all the tiresome formality of those who dare not unbend for fear of appearing not quite the thing, and her toad-eating is of the most unendurable order of that ancient art! I swear I prefer the truckler to that ridiculous parade of grandeur! “You and I, dear Lady Spenborough...” “A woman of quality’s laugh, as we know, Lady Serena—” Ugh!”
“Oh, yes, very bad! quite absurd! But I like Emily, do not you? She is such a lively girl, with such natural, confiding manners!”
“Too easily quelled! It is a study to see her guilt-stricken countenance when Mama’s basilisk eyes admonish her! I will allow her to be both natural and beautiful, but if you have discovered more wit in her than may be stowed in your thimble, and leave room to spare, you have remarkable powers, of discernment, my dear!”
“Ah, but you are so clever, Serena!” Fanny said simply.
“I?” exclaimed Serena incredulously.
“Oh, yes! Everyone says so, and indeed it is true!”
“My dear Fanny, what in the world are you at? I have not the smallest pretensions to anything more than common sense!”
“But you have! You have a well-informed mind, and you always know what to say to people. Why, when the Castlereaghs were staying with us last year, I was quite lost in admiration at the way you contrived to talk to him! When I could think of nothing to say but the merest commonplace!”
“Good gracious, what nonsense! That style of thing, I promise you, is nothing but a trick! You forget how long I have been knocking about the world. When you are as old as I am you will be doing the same.”
“Oh, no! I never shall be able to,” Fanny said, shaking her head. “I am quite as stupid as Emily Laleham, and I’m sure you must often be quite provoked by me.”
“Never till this moment!” Serena declared, with a slightly heightened colour, but in a rallying tone. “Good God, if ever I have another suitor I’ll take good care to keep him out of your way! You would make him believe me a blue-stocking, and after that, farewell to my chance of contracting even a respectable marriage!”
That made Fanny laugh, and no more was said. But Serena was shocked to realize how truly she had spoken. Much as she loved the gentle creature, she was sometimes provoked by her simplicity, and often longed for the companionship of someone with wits to match her own.
It was hard, too, to accustom herself to what she thought a dawdling way of living, and harder still to abandon her hunting. That, while she was in deep mourning, she must always have done, but she might, had either Fanny or her cousin shared her passion, have enjoyed some gallops. But Fanny was a very nervous horsewoman, willing to amble with her along the lanes, but cast into an agony of apprehension at the mere suggestion of jumping the smallest obstacle; and Hartley regarded horses as nothing more than a means of getting from one place to another.
She had felt herself obliged to send her hunters to Tattersall’s, retaining only one little spirting thoroughbred mare, which could be stabled at the Dower House. The stables there had not been built to accommodate more than six horses, and although Hartley had politely begged her to consider the Milverley stables as much her own as they had ever been her pride would not allow her to be so much beholden to him. Fanny, knowing what a grief it must be to her, was aghast, but Serena, who could not bear to have a wound touched, or even noticed, said lightly: “Oh, fiddle! What’s the use of keeping hunters one can’t ride? I can’t afford to have them eating their heads off, and I know of no reason why my cousin should!”