So she shakes her well-known curls solemnly at the fibber and says nothing, but thinks ever so much the more. She is an astute old aristocrat, old--Heaven knows _how_ old--but as festive as a young thing of one score, and always to be found at country houses, as a sort of standing dish. They do say--they who say everything--that she never spends any of her own income, but is kept in board and lodging by the friends whom she honours by feeding at their expense. “We are only going down for a week, couldn’t we persuade you, dear Marchioness, to run down with us?” Yes. The Dowager accepts with pleasure. She is a bit of a wag. She has lived so long in the world that she has grown a little cynical and humorous over its fads and follies, and Lady Beranger amuses her immensely. It’s such fun to think that Lady Beranger believes she takes her in, when all the while she reads Lady B. through and through, and knows that she is only asked down to Sandilands for mamma to talk to, while her daughters catch the eligibles. The day after the Berangers come down to Sandilands is a day of days. A sort of day on which one feels satisfied with one’s-self and with one’s neighbours, and a day on which we forget all the bad days, simply because this one is so exceptionally beautiful. A mite of a breeze swishes by, just to stir up the leaves overhead out of their laziness, and to make them grumble monotonously at being disturbed. The big brown bees greedily devour the faces of the fragrant roses, the morning is dressed up in pale crimson, the scent of flowers weighs down the babyish wings of the air, and a couple of pinkish, purplish clouds stand like motionless pillars of Heaven. It feels to the most unromantic like a hasty snatch of golden splendour gone astray from Eden, an hour in which “Society” forgets its paltry ambitions and heart-burnings, and feels as if there is yet some balm in Gilead, and a life beyond Tophet, in which human hearts will have peace and rest. Zai has slipped out through the long French casement that opens on the lawn. Gabrielle has contrived to get Lord Delaval into the music-room, where she feeds him with passionate French love-songs, in a low, rich contralto. Trixy, leaning back, fair and indolent, and a trifle indifferent, listens to Archibald Hamilton’s prosy discourse on the Land Bill. Baby has meandered down the flowery paths with young Hargreaves, the good-looking village Vet, on pretence of showing him an ill-conditioned Persian cat, but in reality to amuse herself with him _faute de mieux_. So Zai, once out of sight, flies swiftly through the shrubberies, and only pauses when the far end of the grounds is reached. It is just from this particular spot that a glimpse of Elm Lodge can be had. She leans languidly against an old oak, with the grass, which is yet virgin from the Sun-god’s kisses, making a dainty green carpet for her little feet.