However, there it was.  This little struggling artist had refused Harry; and she had refused Duddon.

For one could not be so absurd as to ignore that.  Victoria, sitting in the shade beside Lady Barbara, who had gone to sleep, looked dreamily round on the rose-red pile of building, on the great engirdling woods, the hills, the silver reaches of river—­interwoven now with the dark tree-masses, now with glades of sunlit pasture.  Duddon was one of the great possessions of England.  And this slip of a girl, with her home-made blouses, and her joy in making twenty pounds out of her drawings, wherewith to pay the rent, had put it aside, apparently without a moment’s hesitation.  Magnanimity—­or stupidity?

The next moment Victoria was despising her own amazement.  “One takes one’s own lofty feelings for granted—­but never other people’s!  She says she doesn’t love him—­and that’s the reason.  And I straightway don’t believe her.  What snobs we all are!  One’s astonishment betrays one’s standard.  Gerald says, ‘What have the poor to do with fine feelings?’ and I detest him for it.  But I’m no better.”

Suddenly, on the other side of the yew hedge behind her—­voices.  Harry and Lydia Penfold, in eager and laughing discussion.  And all at once a name reached her ears: 

“Lydia”—­pronounced rather shyly, in Tatham’s voice.

“Lydia!" No doubt by the bidding of the young lady.

“I did not know I was so old-fashioned,” thought Lady Tatham indignantly.

Yet the tone in which the name was given was neither caressing nor tender.  It simply meant, of course, that the young woman was breaking him in to her ideas; her absurd ideas, from which Harry must be protected.

They emerged from the shrubbery and came toward her.  Lydia timidly approached Victoria.  With Tatham she had not apparently been timid.  But for his mother she was all deference.

“Isn’t there a flower-show here to-morrow?  May Susan and I come and help?”

The speaker raised her eyes to Lady Tatham, and Victoria read in them something beautiful and appealing, that at once moved and angered her.  The girl seemed to offer her heart to Tatham’s mother.

“I can’t marry your son!—­but let me love you—­be your friend!—­the friend of both.”

Was that what it meant?

What could Victoria do?  There was Harry hovering in the background, with that eager, pale look.  She was helpless.  Mechanically she said, “We shall be delighted—­grateful.  I will send for you.”

Thenceforward, however, Lydia allowed Tatham no more private speech with her.  She made herself agreeable to all Victoria’s guests in turn.  Delorme fell head over ears in love with her, so judicious, yet so evidently sincere were the flatteries she turned upon him, and so docile her consent to another sitting.  Sweet, grave Lucy Manisty watched her with fascination.  The Manisty boy dragged her to the Long Pond, to show her the water-beasts there, as the best way of marking his approval.  Colonel Barton forgot politics to chat with her; and the mocking speculation in Cyril Boden’s eyes gradually softened, as the girl’s charm and beauty penetrated, little by little, through all the company.