Nataly heard the invitation of the guests of the evening to Lakelands next day.

Her anxieties were at once running about to gather provisions for the baskets.  She spoke of them at night.  But Victor had already put the matter in the hands of Madame Callet; and all that could be done, would be done by Armandine, he knew.  ’If she can’t muster enough at home, she’ll be off to her Piccadilly shop by seven A.M.  Count on plenty for twice the number.’

Nataly was reposing on the thought that they were her friends, when Victor mentioned his having in the afternoon despatched a note to his relatives, the Duvidney ladies, inviting them to join him at the station to-morrow, for a visit of inspection to the house of his building on his new estate.  He startled her.  The Duvidney ladies were, to his knowledge, of the order of the fragile minds which hold together by the cement of a common trepidation for the support of things established, and have it not in them to be able to recognize the unsanctioned.  Good women, unworldly of the world, they were perforce harder than the world, from being narrower and more timorous.

‘But, Victor, you were sure they would refuse!’

He answered:  ’They may have gone back to Tunbridge Wells.  By the way, they have a society down there I want for Fredi.  Sure, do you say, my dear?  Perfectly sure.  But the accumulation of invitations and refusals in the end softens them, you will see.  We shall and must have them for Fredi.’

She was used to the long reaches of his forecasts, his burning activity on a project; she found it idle to speak her thought, that his ingenuity would have been needless in a position dictated by plain prudence, and so much happier for them.

They talked of Mrs. Burman until she had to lift a prayer to be saved from darker thoughts, dreadfully prolific, not to be faced.  Part of her prayer was on behalf of Mrs. Burman, for life to be extended to her, if the poor lady clung to life—­if it was really humane to wish it for her:  and heaven would know:  heaven had mercy on the afflicted.

Nataly heard the snuffle of hypocrisy in her prayer.  She had to cease to pray.

CHAPTER IX

AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS

One may not have an intention to flourish, and may be pardoned for a semblance of it, in exclaiming, somewhat royally, as creator and owner of the place:  ‘There you see Lakelands.’

The conveyances from the railway station drew up on a rise of road fronting an undulation, where our modern English architect’s fantasia in crimson brick swept from central gables to flying wings, over pents, crooks, curves, peaks, cowled porches, balconies, recesses, projections, away to a red village of stables and dependent cottages; harmonious in irregularity; and coloured homely with the greensward about it, the pines beside it, the clouds above it.  Not many palaces