So they remained, on one excuse or the other,--while other guests came or went, and took long walks and motor-rides in the neighbourhood and amused themselves pretty much in their own way, Maryllia rightly considering that to be the truest form of hospitality. She herself, however, was living a somewhat restrained life among them,--and she began to realise more than ever the difference between 'friends' and 'acquaintances,' and the hopeless ennui engendered by the proximity of the latter, without the sympathy of the former. She was learning the lesson that cannot be too soon mastered by everyone who seeks for pure happiness in this world--'The Kingdom of God is within you.' In herself she was not content,--yet she knew no way in which to make herself contented. "I want something"--she said to herself--"Yet I do not know what I want." Her pleasantest time during the inroad of her society friends, was when, after her daily housekeeping consultations with Mrs. Spruce, she could go and have a chat with Cicely in that young person's small study, which was set apart for her, next to her bedroom nearly at the top of the house, and which commanded a wide view of the Manor park-lands, and the village of St. Rest, with the silvery river winding through it, and the spire of the church rising from the surrounding foliage like a finger pointing to heaven. And she also found relief from the strain of constant entertaining by rising early in the mornings and riding on her favourite 'Cleopatra' all over her property, calling on her new agent, Frank Stanways, and his wife, and chatting with the various persons in her employ. She did not however go much into the village, and on this point one morning her agent ventured to observe-"Old Mr. Letherbarrow has been saying that he has not seen you lately, Miss Vancourt,--not since your friends came down. He seems to miss you very much."
Maryllia, swaying lightly in her saddle, stooped over her mare's neck and patted it, to hide sudden tears that sprang, she knew not why, to her eyes.
"Poor Josey!" she said--"I'm sorry! Tell him I'll come as soon as all my visitors are gone--they will not stay long. The dinner-party next week concludes everything. Then I shall have time to go about the village as usual."
"That will be delightful!" said Alicia Stanways, a bright little woman, whose introduction and supervision of a 'model dairy' on the Abbot's Manor estate was the pride of her life--"It really makes all the people happy to see you! Little Ipsie Frost was actually crying for you the other day."