"Then as soon as he had to consider women at all he found it easier to lie to them because of their want of understanding, and chattering tongues, and as he did not consider that they were his equals in anything, no degradation was entailed in making things easy for himself with them, by lying to them."

"How ingenuous!"

"That is how it seems to me, and so things have gone on--tradition and instinct again! Until even now when man is forced to consider women, the original instinct is still there making him feel that it does not matter lying to them."

"I believe you are right. You are not a suffragette?"

"Oh, no! I like women to advance in everything, but unless you could destroy their dramatic instinct, and hysteria, I think it would be a pity for a country if they had votes."

"You despise women and respect men, then?"

"Not at all; it would be like despising bread and respecting water. I only despise weakness in either s.e.x."

"Well, Miss Bush, I think you have a wonderfully-stored mind. I don't feel that ninety pounds a year and drudgery is the right thing for you.

What is to be done?"

Katherine gave one of her rare soft laughs.

"Believe me, madam, the lessons I am learning in Your Ladyship's service are worth more to me than my salary. I am quite contented and enjoy my drudgery."

"So you are learning lessons--are you!" Lady Garribardine chuckled again. "Of the world, the flesh or the devil?"

"A little of all three, perhaps," Katherine answered with shy demureness.

"Look here, young woman, I have remarked more than once that you possess a quality--almost unknown in ninety-nine females out of a hundred, and non-existent in the middle cla.s.ses--a fine sense of humour. It is quite out of place--and like the royal rose imprinted upon the real queen's left shoulder, I expect we shall discover presently that the butcher and baker forebears are all moonshine, and that you are a princess in disguise.--See, that is Windsor--isn't it fine?"

"Ah! Yes!" cried Katherine. "It makes one think."

They were rushing along the road from Staines where they could see the splendid pile standing out against the sky.

"All those old grey stones put together by brutes and fools and brains and force. I will take you there myself some day."

"I shall love to go."

Then Her Ladyship became quite silent as was her custom when she felt inclined so to be. The obligation to make conversation never weighed upon her. This made her a delightful companion. They arrived at the park gates of Blissington Court about one o'clock, and Katherine Bush felt again a delightful excitement. She had never seen a big English country home except in pictures.

The lodge-keeper came out. He was an old man in a quaint livery.

"I cannot stand the untidy females escaping from the washtub who attend to most people's gates. This family of Peterson have opened those of Blissington for two hundred years, and have always worn the same sort of livery, from father to son. Their intelligence is at the lowest ebb, and they make capital gate-keepers. There is generally a 'simple' boy or two to carry on the business. The women folk keep out of sight, it is a tradition in the family--they take a pride in it. I give them unusually high wages, and whatever else grows more and more idiotic, the gate-keeping instinct survives in full force. There are three lodges--all kept by Petersons."

"How wonderful," said Katherine.

"Good day, Jacob!--The family well? Jane quite recovered from the chicken-pox, eh?"

"Quite well, Your Ladyship," and the old man's wandering eyes were fixed in adoration upon his mistress's face. "And Your Ladyship's G.o.dchild, Sarah, is growing that knowing my daughter can hardly keep her from the front garden."

"I am delighted to hear it. I shall be stopping in to see you to-morrow, tell Mrs. Peterson. This is my new secretary, Miss Bush, Jacob--you will know her again, won't you?"

"I'll try to, Your Ladyship," a little doubtfully, and he bowed deeply as the motor rolled on along a beautiful drive through the vast park, with its groups of graceful deer peering at them from under the giant trees.

Katherine was taking in the whole scene, the winter day, and the brown earth, and the blue sky, and the beauty of it all!

Yes--this sort of thing was what must be hers some day when she had fitted herself to possess it. They came to another gate--and yet another--iron ones with no lodges, and then they swept through a wide avenue with sprucely kept edges and so on up to the front door.

It was a long irregular building which Katherine saw, princ.i.p.ally built in the middle of the seventeenth century, and added to from time to time. It was very picturesque, and when they were inside, the hall proved to be very fine. It was huge and square and panelled with some good Grinling Gibbons carving, and quant.i.ties of indifferently painted ancestors, for the most part in stiff peers' robes.--They had been a distinguished crew, not of the fox-hunting type.

"These are my people, Miss Bush, not Garribardines," Her Ladyship said, pointing to the portraits. "They were not handsome, as you see, and evidently did not encourage the best artists--the few who did are in the other rooms and the picture gallery. Come, we will go straight in to lunch; I am as hungry as a schoolboy--You will lunch with me."

Bronson had gone down much earlier and was awaiting them with two footmen, as dignified as usual.

The dining-room was in a panelled pa.s.sage to the right and was a long, low room of much earlier date.

"A relic incorporated later in the present structure," Katherine was told.

It was perfectly beautiful, she thought, with its deep brown oak, wax polished to the highest l.u.s.tre, and its curtains of splendid Venetian velvet in faded crimson and green, on a white satin ground all harmonious with age and mellowing.

"I had a terrible struggle to oust the Victorian horrors I had been brought up with, and which had insinuated themselves, as all vulgar things do, into almost every room among their betters--taste was quite dead sixty years ago in my father's day. I had to combat sentiment in myself and ruthlessly condemn the whole lot."

"It is most beautiful." Katherine's admiration was indeed sincere.

"Yes--it has been a great pleasure to me getting it perfect. You shall see the whole house presently, but now food is the only important matter.--Bronson--I distrust the look of that ham souffle--are you sure it has not been kept waiting? A second or two alters its consistency.

Take it away at once, man!"--with an indignant sniff--"and tell Francois never to hazard so precarious a dish again for arrivals by motor!"

"Very good, Your Ladyship."

"One can eat bread and cheese, but one cannot stomach an indifferent souffle--it is like an emotional woman, its charm is just as capricious and just as ephemeral!"

The rest of the lunch was to her taste and no further disapproval was expressed.

It was the first time Katherine had broken bread with her mistress, or indeed had even a.s.sisted at a whole luncheon. Coffee was the extent of her knowledge hitherto. It interested her to see the varied dishes, to watch the perfect service, the style of the placing and removing of the plates--the rapidity and noiselessness of it all. She thought of the pressed beef and the stout and the cheese-cakes and the frightful untidiness of everything at Laburnum Villa. That was the strange difference, the utter want of method and order which always rendered the home table a ma.s.s of litter and miscellaneous implements towards the end of a repast, plates and cups pushed here and there and everywhere.

How very good to be out of it all!

To her great surprise, Her Ladyship drank beer--clear golden stuff poured from a lovely crystal and silver jug into a chased silver tankard.

"The best beverage in Christendom!" that epicure said, as she quaffed it. "Have some, Miss Bush. You are young enough to have no dread of gout. It is a vice with me, the worst thing in the world for my rheumatism, and yet I cannot resist the temptation! The day I return home I must fall to my tankard! To-morrow, Bronson removes the accursed thing to the sideboard, out of sight, and I keep up my courage on ridiculously thin Zeltinger."

Katherine tasted it; it was delicious, and as different from what she knew as beer as the tea had been from her original idea of tea.

"Isn't it a heavenly drink, girl! I am glad to see you like it."

Then Lady Garribardine chatted on, giving crisp, witty descriptions of the village and the inhabitants, in language which would often have shocked the genteel sensibilities of Mabel Cawber, but the tones of her voice, whether loud or soft, were the dulcet tones of angels. She had indeed that "excellent thing in woman."

Katherine's workroom was the old schoolroom up in a wing which contained rooms as ancient as the dining-room, and her bedroom adjoined it; and from this a little pa.s.sage led to a narrow staircase going down to a door which opened into the small enclosed rose garden. Up another set of steps from her corridor you were brought into the splendid gallery which ran round two sides of the hall, and into which Her Ladyship's own rooms gave. But in Katherine's corner she was isolated and could come and go abroad without ever pa.s.sing the general living rooms--what an advantage, she felt!

And when, later in the afternoon, her things were unpacked, and she was sitting before a glorious wood fire in the old chimney, sniffing the scent of the burning logs and taking in the whole picture of quaint chintz and shining oak, she felt a sense of contentment and satisfaction.

Fate was indeed treating her handsomely.