The Venetians

people who were not going to Goodwood were going away, starting for Homburg, Marienbad, Wildbad, Auvergne, or the Pyrenees, in advance of the universal rush which would make sleeping-cars impossible, and travelling odious. It annoyed Sophy to hear people talk of getting away; as if London were worn out and done with, London which she was enjoying so intensely. This was the fly in the ointment for Sophy. She felt aggrieved that her sister should have invited her at the end of the season. Yet there was one compensating delight. The sales were on: those delicious drapery sales, which had always been Sophy’s highest ideal of earthly happiness, even when her strained resources had compelled her to turn with unsatisfied longing from a counter where odd lengths of silk and velvet were being all but given away. She had lain broad awake in her attic chamber at Fernhurst regretting those bargains, which would have made her a richly dressed woman at the most moderate cost. The counters of Marshall, and Debenham, and Robinson, and Lewis, at the end of the season, were to Sophy as the board of green cloth to the gambler. She felt that fortunes were to be won for those who had money to stake, fifteen guinea frocks for three pounds, two guinea parasols at nine and eleven-pence.

Eve took her sister to the sales, and financed the situation. With a judicious expenditure of twenty pounds Sophy secured treasures that would last her through the coming autumn and winter, and, with Eve at her elbow, resisted the allurements of unsuitable finery. These shopping mornings were rapture to Sophy, and not without pleasure to Eve. It was pleasant to see Sophy’s joyous excitement, as she hung tremulously between two fabrics which the shopman exhibited for her choice⁠—a bengaline at three and ninepence, which had been seven shillings⁠—a watered silk at two and eleven-pence, which had been eight and sixpence. After intense consideration Sophy settled on the watered silk, not because she liked it best, but because of the “had been.” The original price decided her⁠—not taking into account that the price was reduced in the exact ratio of the material’s unfashionableness, and that she might find herself next winter the only young woman in watered silk. There was for Eve also the pleasure of buying presents for Jenny and Hetty, the two sisters who were pining in their rustic bower, while Sophy was draining the wine-cup of London gaieties. It was delightful to Eve to feel that a few pounds could buy them happiness: and she brought all her knowledge of good and evil to bear upon her selections for those absent ones.

“You have such a very quiet taste,” said Sophy, rather regretfully. “I call those cottons and foulards you have chosen almost dowdy.”

“You won’t think so when you see them made up. I’m afraid your scarlet pongee will look rather too showy for country lanes.”

“My dear Eve, I shall keep it for garden-parties till it begins to get shabby. Scarlet gives just the right touch of colour in a landscape.”

“Yes, but I think one would always rather that somebody else should give the touch.”

“Mr. Sefton said yesterday that fair-haired women should wear scarlet.”

Sefton was Sophy’s great authority. He had been very polite to her, very pleasant, very confidential, talking to her about London society as if she were to the manner born, and had been brought up in the very midst of these people whom she saw today for the first time. This flattered her; indeed, his whole speech was made up of flattery, that subtle adulation which did not express itself in mere words, but which was indicated rather by a deference to her opinion, a quickness in laughing at her little jokes, an acceptance of her as on his own intellectual level. “You and I know better than the common herd,” was expressed in all his conversation with her.

When they met in the evening it was only natural she should tell him her sister’s plans for the next day, whether they were going to spend the morning in the Park or at the picture-galleries. Sophy was eager for picture-seeing when there was nothing better to be done. Those galleries would give her so much to talk about at autumn tea-parties, such a superior air among women who thought they did a great deal for art when they fatigued themselves at the Royal Academy.

If they sat in the Park for an hour or so before luncheon Sefton contrived to find them there⁠—if they were picture-seeing he dropped into the gallery, and criticized the pictures in technical phraseology which provided Sophy with a treasury of art talk especially adapted for country use. If they were at a theatre in the evening he was there too. Eve warned Sophy that he was only a philanderer.

“You remember how disagreeably attentive he was to me,” she said, reddening at the recollection, “and yet, you see, he never meant anything.”

“We were worse detrimentals then than we are now,” argued Sophy. “Your marriage has altered our position, and now that the father lives abroad a man need not be afraid of marrying one of us. I don’t mean to say that Mr. Sefton is going to make me an offer; but he is certainly very attentive.”

“Yes, he is very attentive, I admit. He likes being attentive to girls. Nothing pleases him better than to try the effect of that musical voice of his, and his nicely chosen phrases, upon any girl who will listen to him⁠—like Orpheus leading the brute beasts with his lyre. I doubt if he cares any more for the girls than Orpheus cared for the beasts. He is false for falsehood’s sake.”

“You are very bitter against him, Eve,” retorted Sophy. “Yet I dare say you would have married him if he had asked you.”

“I think not.”

“Oh, nonsense. You would not have refused to be mistress of the Manor. Merewood is a hovel in comparison.”

“Merewood has the man I love