Chapter 5

I had been 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 was 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
a friend of one of her nephews at Oxford? 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 come into the paternal estate, two or three
thousand a year in Hampshire; but he had let the place
advantageously and was generous to four plain sisters who lived at
Bournemouth and adored him. The family was hideous all round, but
the very salt of the earth. He was supposed to