Oldal 167 [167]
LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY. 147
— = mt
a SEE EEE —_
One evening, just before the Earl’s Court cottages were completed,
there was a grand dinner party at Dorincourt. There had not
been such a party at the Castle for a long time. A few days before
it took place, Sir Harry Lorridaile and Lady Lorridaile, who was the
Earl's only sister, actually came for a visit—a thing which caused
the greatest excitement in the village and set Mrs. Dibble’s shop¬
bell tinkling madly again, because it was well known that Lady
Lorridaile had only been to Dorincourt once since her marriage,
thirty-five years before. She was a handsome old lady with white
curls and dimpled, peachy cheeks, and she was as good as gold, but
she had never approved of her brother any more than did the rest
of the world, and having a strong will of her own and not being at
all afraid to speak her mind frankly, she had, after several lively
quarrels with his lordship, seen very little of him since her young
days. |
She had heard a great deal of him that was not pleasant
through the years in which they had been separated. She had
heard about his neglect of his wife, and of the poor lady's death ;
and of his indifference to his children; and of the two weak, vicious,
unprepossessing elder boys who had been no credit to him or to
any one else. Those two elder sons, Bevis and Maurice, she had
never seen; but once there had come to Lorridaile Park a tall, stal¬
wart, beautiful young fellow about eighteen years old, who had told
her that he was her nephew Cedric Errol, and that he had come to
see her because he was passing near the place and wished to look
at his Aunt Constantia of whom he had heard his mother speak.
Lady Lorridaile’s kind heart had warmed through and through at
the sight of the young man, and she had made him stay with her a
week, and petted him, and made much of him and admired him
immensely. He was so sweet-tempered, light-hearted, spirited a
lad, that when he went away, she had hoped to see him often again ;