Albinia knew that it must be so unpleasant to him, that she blushed up to the roots of her hair, and could not look at anybody.

When she recovered, the first comers were taking leave, but the second set stayed on and on till past luncheon-time, and far past her patience, before the room was at last cleared.

Gilbert hurried in, and was received by his father with, ’You are very much obliged to her!’

‘Indeed I am,’ said Gilbert, in a winning, pleasant manner.

‘I don’t want you to be,’ said Albinia, affectionately laying her arm on his shoulder.  ’And now for luncheon—­I pitied you, poor fellow; I thought you must have been famished.’

‘Anything not to have all the Drurys at luncheon,’ said Gilbert, confidentially, ‘I had begun to wish myself at Tremblam.’

‘By the bye,’ said Mr. Kendal, waking as he sat down at the bottom of the table, ‘how was it that the Drurys did not stay to luncheon?’

‘Was that what they were waiting for?’ exclaimed Albinia.  ’Poor people, I had no notion of that.’

‘They do have luncheon here in general,’ said Mr. Kendal, as if not knowing exactly how it came to pass.

‘O yes,’ said Lucy; ’Sarah Anne asked me whether we ate wedding-cake every day.’

‘Poor Miss Sarah Anne!’ said Albinia, laughing.  ’But one cannot help feeling inhospitable when people come so unconscionably early, and cut up all one’s morning.’

The door was again besieged by visitors, just as they were all going out to make the round of the garden, and it was not till half-past four that the succession ceased, and Albinia was left to breathe freely, and remember how often Maurice had called her to order for intolerance of morning calls.

‘And not the only people I cared to see,’ she said, ’the Dusautoys and Nugents.  But they have too much mercy to call the first day.’

Mr. Kendal looked as if his instinct were drawing him study-wards, but Albinia hung on his arm, and made him come into the garden.  Though devoid of Winifred’s gardening tastes, she was dismayed at the untended look of the flower-beds.  The laurels were too high, and seemed to choke the narrow space, and the turf owed its verdant appearance to damp moss.  She had made but few steps before the water squished under her feet, and impelled her to exclaim, ’What a pity this pond should not be filled up!’

‘Filled up!—­’

’Yes, it would be so much less damp.  One might drain it off into the river, and then we should get rid of the fog.’

And she began actively to demonstrate the convenient slope, and the beautiful flower-bed that might be made in its place.  Mr. Kendal answered with a few assenting sounds and complacent looks, and Albinia, accustomed to a brother with whom to assent was to act, believed the matter was in train, and that pond and fever would be annihilated.

The garden opened into a meadow with a causeway leading to a canal bank, where there was a promising country walk, but the cruel visitors had left no time for exploring, and Albinia had to return home and hurry up her arrangements before there was space to turn round in her room—­even then it was not what Winifred could have seen without making a face.