he had spent much of his time in bachelor days. The men were old-time friends; as they had married, the wives had become his acquaintances too—in some cases (as in Mrs. Raymore's) more than mere acquaintances. They had all been interested in him, and consequently were curious about his wife—critical, no doubt, but prepared to be friendly and to take her into the set, if she would come. Mrs. Raymore, as she sat at the head of her table, with Grantley by her and Sibylla on Raymore's right hand at the other end, was thinking that they, in their turn, might reasonably interest the young bride—might set her thinking, and encourage or discourage her according to the conclusions she came to about them. She and Raymore would bear scrutiny well as things went. There was a very steady and affectionate friendship between them; they lived comfortably together, and had brought up their children—a boy and a girl—successfully and without friction. Raymore—a tall man with a reddish face and deliberate of speech—was always patient and reasonable. He had never been very impassioned; there had not been much to lose of what is most easily lost. He might have had a few more intellectual tastes, perhaps, and a keener interest in things outside his business; but she had her own friends, and on the whole there was little to complain of.
Then came the Fanshaws—John and Christine. He was on the Stock Exchange; she, a dainty pretty woman, given up to society and to being very well dressed, but pleasant, kind, and clever in a light sort of way. They liked to entertain a good deal, and got through a lot of money. When Fanshaw was making plenty, and Christine had plenty to spend, things went smoothly enough. In bad times there was trouble, each thinking that retrenchment could best be practised by the other and in regard to the expenses to which the other was addicted: it was, for instance, the stables against the dressmaker then. The happiness of the household depended largely on the state of the markets—a thing which it might interest Mrs. Grantley Imason to hear.
Next came the Selfords—Richard and Janet. He was a rather small frail man, of private means, a dabbler in art. She was artistic too, or would have told you so, and fond of exotic dogs, which she imported from far-off places, and which usually died soon. They were a gushing pair, both towards one another and towards the outside world; almost aggressively affectionate in public. "Trying to humbug everybody," Tom Courtland used to say; but that was too sweeping a view. Their excessive amiability was the result of their frequent quarrels—or rather tiffs, since quarrel is perhaps an over-vigorous word. They were always either concealing the existence of a tiff or making one up, reconciling themselves with a good deal of display. Everybody knew this, thanks in part to their sharp-eyed sharp-tongued daughter Anna, a girl of sixteen, who knew all about the tiffs and could always be got to talk about them.
The last pair were the Courtlands themselves. All the set was rather afraid of Lady Harriet. She was a tall, handsome, fair woman, still young; she patronised them rather, but was generally affable and agreeable when nothing occurred to upset her. Tom Courtland grew more depressed, heavy, and dreary every day. A crisis was expected—but Lady Harriet's small-talk did not suffer. Mrs. Raymore thought that the less Grantley's wife saw or knew of that household the better.
The party was completed by Suzette Bligh, a girl pretty in a faded sort of way, not quite so young as she tried to look, and in Mrs. Raymore's opinion, quite likely not to marry at all; and finally by young Blake, Walter Dudley Blake, a favourite of hers and of many other people's, known as a climber of mountains and a shooter of rare game in his energetic days; suspected of enjoying life somewhat to excess and with riotous revelry in his seasons of leisure; impetuous, chivalrous, impulsive, and notably good-looking. Mrs. Raymore had put him on Sibylla's right—in case her husband should not prove amusing to the honoured guest.
On the whole, she thought, they ought not to frighten Sibylla much. There was one terrible example—the Courtlands; but when it comes to throwing things about, the case is admittedly abnormal. For the rest they seemed, to the student of matrimony, fair average samples of a bulk of fair average merit. Perhaps there might have been an ideal union—just to counter-balance the Courtlands at the other extreme. If such were desirable, let it be hoped that the Imasons themselves would supply it. In regard to one point, she decided, the company was really above the average—and that the most important point. There had been rumours once about Christine Fanshaw—indeed they were still heard sometimes; but scandal had never assailed any other woman there. In these days that was something, thought Mrs. Raymore.
Grantley turned from Christine Fanshaw to his hostess.
"You're very silent. What are you thinking about?" he asked.
"Sibylla's really beautiful, and in a rather unusual way. You might pass her over once; but if you did look once, you'd be sure to look always."
"Another woman's looks have kept your attention all this time?"
"Your wife's," she reminded him with an affectionately friendly glance. "And I was wondering what she thought of us all, what we all look like in those pondering thoughtful questioning eyes of hers."
"Her eyes do ask questions, don't they?" laughed Grantley.
"Many, many, and must have answers, I should think. And don't they expect good answers?"
"Oh, she's not really at all alarming!"
"You can make the eyes say something different, I daresay?"
He laughed again very contentedly. Mrs. Raymore's admiration pleased him, since she was not very easy herself to please. He was glad she approved of Sibylla, though as a rule his own opinion was enough for him.
"Well, they aren't always questioning. That would be fatiguing in a wife—really as bad as continually discussing the Arian heresy, as old Johnson says. But I daresay," he lowered his voice, "Lady Harriet would excite a query or two."
"You've told me nothing about Sibylla. I shall have to find it all out for myself."
"That's the only knowledge worth having; and I'm only learning myself still, you know."
"Really, that's an unusually just frame of mind for a husband. I've high hopes of you, Grantley."
"Good! Because you know me uncommonly well."
She thought a moment.
"No, not so very well," she said. "You're hard to know."
He took that as a compliment; probably most people would, since it seems to hint at something rare and out of the common; inaccessibility has an aristocratic flavour.
"Oh, I suppose we all have our fastnesses," he said with a laugh which politely waived any claim to superiority without expressly abandoning it.
"Doesn't one give up the key of the gates by marrying?"
"My dear Kate, read your Bluebeard again!"
Mrs. Raymore relapsed into the silence that was almost habitual to her, but it passed through her mind that the conversation had soon turned from Sibylla to Grantley himself, or at least had dealt with Sibylla purely in her bearing on Grantley; it had not increased her knowledge of Mrs. Imason as an independent individual.
"Well, with business what it is," said Fanshaw in his loud voice—a voice that had a way of stopping other people's voices—"we must cut it down somewhere."
"Oh, you're as rich as Crœsus, Fanshaw!" objected young Blake.
"I'm losing money every day! Christine and I were discussing it as we drove here."
"I like your idea of discussion, John," remarked Christine in her delicate tones, generally touched with sarcasm. "I couldn't open my lips."
"He closured you, and then threw out your Budget?" asked Grantley.
"He almost stripped my gown from my back, and made an absolute clutch at my diamonds."
"I put forward the reasonable view," Fanshaw insisted rather heatedly. "What I said was, begin with superfluities——"
"Are clothes superfluities?" interjected Christine, watching the gradual flushing of her husband's face with mischievous pleasure.
"Nothing is superfluous that is beautiful," said Selford;