again with my mother, but except Mrs. Meldrum and the gleam
of France had not found at Folkestone my old resources and pastimes.
Mrs. Meldrum, much edified by my report of the performances, as she
called them, in my studio, had told me that to her knowledge Flora would
soon be on the straw: she had cut from her capital such fine fat slices
that there was almost nothing more left to swallow. Perched on her
breezy cliff the good lady dazzled me as usual by her universal light:
she knew so much more about everything and everybody than I could ever
squeeze out of my colour-tubes. She knew that Flora was acting on system
and absolutely declined to be interfered with: her precious reasoning
was that her money would last as long as she should need it, that a
magnificent marriage would crown her charms before she should be really
pinched. She had a sum put by for a liberal outfit; meanwhile the proper
use of the rest was to decorate her for the approaches to the altar,
keep her afloat in the society in which she would most naturally
meet her match. Lord Iffield had been seen with her at Lucerne, at
Cadenabbia; but it was Mrs. Meldrum's conviction that nothing was to be
expected of him but the most futile flirtation. The girl had a certain
hold of him, but with a great deal of swagger he hadn't the spirit of
a sheep: he was in fear of his father and would never commit himself in
Lord Considine's lifetime. The most Flora might achieve would be that
he wouldn't marry some one else. Geoffrey Dawling, to Mrs. Meldrum's
knowledge (I had told her of the young man's visit) had attached himself
on the way back from Italy to the Hammond Synge group. My informant
was in a position to be definite about this dangler; she knew about his
people: she had heard of him before. Hadn't he been, at Oxford, a friend
of one of her nephews? Hadn't he spent the Christmas holidays precisely
three years before at her brother-in-law's in Yorkshire, taking that
occasion to get himself refused with derision by wilful Betty, the
second daughter of the house? Her sister, who liked the floundering
youth, had written to her to complain of Betty, and that the young man
should now turn up as an appendage of Flora's was one of those oft-cited
proofs that the world is small and that there are not enough people to
go round. His father had been something or other in the Treasury; his
grandfather, on the mother's side, had been something or other in the
Church. He had c