The Keepers of the People

113She disliked London; the first sight of the Thames after an absence set her shuddering; yet her friends were all dwellers in London. She was not liked in the County, and it was but natural. On her return from abroad, after her marriage, she had tired of the society of the County people in a month; her unfeigned, unconcealed indifference to their pursuits, and their talk; her entire aloofness from them had banded them against her in an exasperation to which they were powerless to give vent. For she had not been slow to learn that the Countess of Lisdor, by virtue of her name and wealth, was a power in the County; and had shown that she had the skill and courage to use her power to the utmost, on the only occasion on which their ill-will had found expression. Had she cared to, she might have led the County: a County is always its women: but her curiosity about her fellows had not yet ripened to the desire to rule; and she was content to force them to let her go her own way, to leave her to the uninterrupted enjoyment of her riding, her books, and the few clever friends who could tell her something of the things she wished to know.

114A friendship between her and Ralph Falcon was not long springing up: they were attracted to one another by a kindred strength of spirit; and little definite as it was to the mind of either — neither was given to waste time analysing the emotions — it was a strong attraction that was drawing them very close to one another. Besides, they were together in a pleasant land; and each found the other’s beauty a perpetual delight. He soon became her companion on her rides in the early morning; they sat together on the terrace through the long, hot hours of the middle day, she reading, he smoking or dreaming. Yet they talked but little: both were of a silent habit: sometimes, as they breathed their horses after a gallop, they would talk of the lives of the country folk; sometimes, as they sat on the terrace, she would lay down her book, tell him what the writer had said, and talk with him about it. Always his refusal to accept any vague generalisations, his aversion from the commonplace sentimentalities, his persistent assertion of the sound, human point of view were very satisfying to her clear intelligence.