He went forward to meet them—­his manner that of the graceful host.  Lady Alanby, having been welcomed by him, and led to the most comfortable, tree-shaded chair, found his bearing so elegantly chastened that she gazed at him with private curiosity.  To her far-seeing and highly experienced old mind it seemed the bearing of a man who was “up to something.”  What special thing did he chance to be “up to”?  His glance certainly lurked after Miss Vanderpoel oddly.  Was he falling in unholy love with the girl, under his stupid little wife’s very nose?

She could not, however, give her undivided attention to him, as she wished to keep her eye on her grandson and—­outrageously enough fit happened that just as tea was brought out and Tommy was beginning to cheer up and quite come out a little under the spur of the activities of handing bread and butter and cress sandwiches, who should appear but the two Lithcom girls, escorted by their aunt, Mrs. Manners, with whom they lived.  As they were orphans without money, if the Manners, who were rather well off, had not taken them in, they would have had to go to the workhouse, or into genteel amateur shops, as they were not clever enough for governesses.

Mary, with her turned-up nose, looked just about as usual, but Jane had a new frock on which was exactly the colour of the big, appealing eyes, with their trick of following people about.  She looked a little pale and pathetic, which somehow gave her a specious air of being pretty, which she really was not at all.  The swaying young thinness of those very slight girls whose soft summer muslins make them look like delicate bags tied in the middle with fluttering ribbons, has almost invariably a foolish attraction for burly young men whose characters are chiefly marked by lack of forethought, and Lady Alanby saw Tommy’s robust young body give a sort of jerk as the party of three was brought across the grass.  After it he pulled himself together hastily, and looked stiff and pink, shaking hands as if his elbow joint was out of order, being at once too loose and too rigid.  He began to be clumsy with the bread and butter, and, ceasing his talk with Miss Vanderpoel, fell into silence.  Why should he go on talking? he thought.  Miss Vanderpoel was a cracking handsome girl, but she was too clever for him, and he had to think of all sorts of new things to say when he talked to her.  And—­well, a fellow could never imagine himself stretched out on the grass, puffing happily away at a pipe, with a girl like that sitting near him, smiling—­the hot turf smelling almost like hay, the hot blue sky curving overhead, and both the girl and himself perfectly happy—­chock full of joy—­though neither of them were saying anything at all.  You could imagine it with some girls—­you did imagine it when you wakened early on a summer morning, and lay in luxurious stillness listening to the birds singing like mad.

Lady Jane was a nicely-behaved girl, and she tried to keep her following blue eyes fixed on the grass, or on Lady Anstruthers, or Miss Vanderpoel, but there was something like a string, which sometimes pulled them in another direction, and once when this had happened—­quite against her will—­she was terrified to find Lady Alanby’s glass lifted and fixed upon her.