Lady Mallowe and her daughter did not pay their visit to Asshawe Holt, the absolute, though not openly referred to, fact being that they had not been invited.The visit in question had merely floated in the air as a delicate suggestion made by her ladyship in her letter to Mrs.
Asshe Shaw, to the effect that she and Joan were going to stay at Temple Barholm, the visit to Asshawe they had partly arranged some time ago might now be fitted in.
The partial arrangement itself, Mrs.Asshe Shaw remarked to her eldest daughter when she received the suggesting note, was so partial as to require slight consideration, since it had been made "by the woman herself, who would push herself and her daughter into any house in England if a back door were left open." In the civilly phrased letter she received in answer to her own, Lady Mallowe read between the lines the point of view taken, and writhed secretly, as she had been made to writhe scores of times in the course of her career.It had happened so often, indeed, that it might have been imagined that she had become used to it; but the woman who acted as maid to herself and Joan always knew when "she had tried to get in somewhere" and failed.
The note of explanation sent immediately to Miss Alicia was at once adroit and amiable.They had unfortunately been detained in London a day or two past the date fixed for their visit to Asshawe, and Lady Mallowe would not allow Mrs.Asshe Shawe, who had so many guests, to be inconvenienced by their arriving late and perhaps disarranging her plans.So if it was quite convenient, they would come to Temple Barholm a week earlier; but not, of course, if that would be the least upsetting.
When they arrived, Tembarom himself was in London.He had suddenly found he was obliged to go.The business which called him was something which could not be put off.He expected to return at once.
It was made very easy for him when he made his excuses to Palliser, who suggested that he might even find himself returning by the same train with his guests, which would give him opportunities.If he was detained, Miss Alicia could take charge of the situation.They would quite understand when she explained.Captain Palliser foresaw for himself some quiet entertainment in his own meeting with the visitors.
Lady Mallowe always provided a certain order of amusement for him, and no man alive objected to finding interest and even a certain excitement in the society of Lady Joan.It was her chief characteristic that she inspired in a man a vague, even if slightly irritated, desire to please her in some degree.To lead her on to talk in her sometimes brilliant, always heartlessly unsparing, fashion, perhaps to smile her shade of a bitter smile, gave a man something to do, especially if he was bored.Palliser anticipated a possible chance of repeating the dialogue of "the ladies," not, however, going into the Jem Temple Barholm part of it.When one finds a man whose idle life has generated in him the curiosity which is usually called feminine, it frequently occupies him more actively than he is aware or will admit.
A fashionable male gossip is a curious development.Palliser was, upon the whole, not aware that he had an intense interest in finding out the exact reason why Lady Mallowe had not failed utterly in any attempt to drag her daughter to this particular place, to be flung headlong, so to speak, at this special man.Lady Mallowe one could run and read, but Lady Joan was in this instance unexplainable.And as she never deigned the slightest concealment, the story of the dialogue would no doubt cause her to show her hand.She must have a hand, and it must be one worth seeing.
It was not he, however, who could either guess or understand.The following would have been his summing up of her: "Flaringly handsome girl, brought up by her mother to one end.Bad temper to begin with.
Girl who might, if she lost her head, get into some frightful mess.
Meets a fascinating devil in the first season.A regular Romeo and Juliet passion blazes up--all for love and the world well lost.All London looking on.Lady Mallowe frantic and furious.Suddenly the fascinating devil ruined for life, done for.Bolts, gets killed.Lady Mallowe triumphant.Girl dragged about afterward like a beautiful young demon in chains.Refuses all sorts of things.Behaves infernally.Nobody knows anything else."Nobody did know; Lady Mallowe herself did not.From the first year in which Joan had looked at her with child consciousness she had felt that there was antagonism in the deeps of her eyes.No mother likes to recognize such a thing, and Lady Mallowe was a particularly vain woman.The child was going to be an undeniable beauty, and she ought to adore the mother who was to arrange her future.Instead of which, she plainly disliked her.By the time she was three years old, the antagonism had become defiance and rebellion.Lady Mallowe could not even indulge herself in the satisfaction of showing her embryo beauty off, and thus preparing a reputation for her.She was not cross or tearful, but she had the temper of a little devil.She would not be shown off.She hated it, and her bearing dangerously suggested that she hated her handsome young mother.No effects could be produced with her.
Before she was four the antagonism was mutual, and it increased with years.The child was of a passionate nature, and had been born intensely all her mother was not, and intensely not all her mother was.A throw-back to some high-spirited and fiercely honest ancestor created in her a fury at the sight of mean falsities and dishonors.
