I Forbid the Banns! — page 276: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

266 ‘“7] FORBID THE BANNS!” By this time Sir Ecroyd had brushed the sponge cake crumbs, together with an adhesive raisin or two and a streak of citron, from the front of his coat, and was strolling up the gravel path by the side of Bertha, on and their host following. The band was braying away under the trees, the groups on the lawns were beginning to have a disorderly appear- ance, though the tennis players were as brisk as they had been in the early part of the afternoon. Some of the vehicles had already driven away, leaving Lady Ashenthorpe speed- ing the parting guest with smiles of a type fundamentally dif- fering from those which had illumined her face in welcoming her friends—to be more exact, the persons who would be likely to add to the detsiaey of her husband’s seat in Parlia- ment. When Lord Ashenthorpe, Sir Bctoyd. Mr. Charlton, and Bertha.formed a group on the borders of the lawn, the eyes of all the other groups were turned upon them, just as one may see inapicture of Mr. Sidney Cooper’s all the cattle in a field turning to gaze upon a new arrival—just as one may see all the children in a family whose parents have run to seed turning stony gazes upon a human visitant to the room where they are playing trains with upturned sofas. A member of the cabinet, even though he was not a mem- ber of one of the county families of Brackenshire, was still a Personage in the estimation of the guests at Ashmead, and for that Personage, accompanied by Lord Ashenthorpe, to be seen by the side of a person who was referred to as That Woman, was astounding. At this time the short-sighted ladies gazed without feeling the need for the lenses supplied by the optician. There is no necessity to employ spectacles with a handle in order to look at a cabinet minister. Lady Rushton’s group was the only one on the lawn that acted with courage and resolution. She huddled her plain daughters together, and drove them before her to where Gomichbooksico /