“Quite aristocratic,” she said at last, giving it back. “How much style those American girls have!”
“But don’t you think her rather pert-looking?” asked Gwen discontentedly. “She looks ill-tempered, too. I’m sure we sha’n’t get on. Mother and I are making ready to go to Houghton Abbey at once. We’d have a jolly uncomfortable time of it, I wager, if she were to catch us at the Hall.”
Evelyn was gazing into her tea and stirring it absently.
“It seems a shame to have an American nobody come in,” continued Gwen, “and throw us out neck and crop from a house where we’ve always lived. Now, if it were an English girl of our own class,--you, Evelyn,--we shouldn’t mind--at least, not so much, or in the same way.”
Evelyn paled, and her lips contracted slightly.
“But it’s of no use to think of that. We need her money--everything is in tatters at the Hall, and poor George is down to the last seventy pounds.” Gwen laughed. “Do you remember what a time there was getting the five hundred for his expenses out of Aunt Betty? We’ve got to cable him another five hundred--he can’t begin on her money the very minute he’s married, can he now?”
“Arthur must go over,” said Evelyn suddenly, with conviction. “We’re worse off than you are. Old Bagley was down yesterday. He and Arthur were shut in for two hours, and Arthur’s been off his feed--horribly--ever since.”
Gwen, two years younger than Evelyn, could not conceal her feelings so well. She winced, and a look of terror came into her big blue eyes.
“We can’t hold on another year,” continued Evelyn. “And it’s quite impossible for Arthur to take Miss Cadbrough. She’s too hideous, and too hideously, hopelessly middle-class. She could never, never learn not to speak to ladies and gentlemen as if she were a servant.”
Evelyn pretended not to notice Gwen’s unhappiness. She glanced in at the great drawing room, with splendid furniture, and ceiling wonderfully carved by a seventeenth-century Italian. Then her eyes wandered away to the left, to the majestic wing showing there, then on to the brilliant gardens, the fountains and statuary. Her expression became bitter. “And we’ve been undisturbed for nine centuries!” she exclaimed.
Gwen, in spite of her inward tumult, remembered that this boast was rather “tall,” that the Beauvais family had, in fact, been changed radically several times, and only the name had been undisturbed. Her mind paused with a certain satisfaction on these little genealogical discrepancies, because, though she was the sister and the daughter of a duke, she was the granddaughter of a brewer, who had begun life as an apprentice.