“And that avenue,” Lady Elizabeth added sadly. “Bentley, as I believe you call it—”

“Bentigh,” Neddie corrected gently. “It was planted in the first Mr. Knight's time.”

“So I assumed,” she rejoined placidly. “I am sure it is shockingly old-fashioned.”

“I believe the lime trees are over fifty years old,” Neddie agreed. His lips were a trifle too compressed, as though the humourous had given way to the insulting. “Nasty, unnatural sorts of things, limes — don't you agree, Jane?”

“My dear,” cried Lady Elizabeth, “I truly believe that the Austens might benefit from an introduction to Mr. Sothey! Is it not the very thing? Would it not be a service in the calling of Art?”

“Of course,” her husband replied. “You must have Sothey, Austen — he is quite the genius of our little place, as the saying goes, ha! ha! I should not order a spade to be shifted, without I consulted Sothey.”[31]

“He is your chief gardener?” Neddie idly enquired.

” Gardener! Good God, no!” Finch-Hatton cried.

His daughter, the inscrutable Louisa, echoed a shocked and irreverent, “Julian, a gardener? Lord!”

“Mr. Sothey is the second son of the Earl of Matlock,” Lady Elizabeth assured us. “His mother and I were quite the best of friends, before poor Honoria died. I have made it a little cause, you know, to look out for Julian— to further his interest, and so on, where a word or two might help. Particularly since the Earl went all to pieces in that shocking way, a few years ago …”

She left the matter hanging. I had never heard of the Earl of Madock, much less his shocking ruin; but Lizzy nodded shrewdly.

“It is a pity, is it not, that those who most lack success at the tables, are the very ones who game to their ruin?”

“And his heir is just like him!” Lady Elizabeth cried, as hot on the scent as a foxhound. “The Honourable Cecil Sothey has fled to Switzerland these two years or more, and how he lives no one can say!”

“But the younger son takes an interest in … landscape?” I ventured.

“Exactly so! Julian was always of an artistic disposition — a painter in oils, and put to study with the finest masters of Europe, before Buonaparte quite destroyed the Grand Tour, and the Earl's circumstances brought an end to all education. But dear Julian's taste is entirely beyond dispute, is it not, my love?”

Mr. Finch-Hatton had withdrawn his pocket-watch once more, and was studying it intendy.

“Mamma, “Miss Louisa cried in a warning tone, “if you do not leave off chattering, we shall be late for dinner at Eastwell. And then what will Julian say?”

“He is presently a guest at Eastwell Park?” I enquired.

“At last!” Louisa exclaimed. “Julian has been all the summer promising to come, and never setting foot through the door! I declare I was quite distracted with disappointment. But there it is! One lady's misfortune is another's good luck. No one will want Julian at The Larches, I daresay, now that Mrs. Grey—”

“Louisa!” her mother interjected sternly. “It does not do to talk of such things. I am sure Mr. Austen is already sick to death of that odious woman. I quite pity you, Mr. Austen. To be let in for such a tiresome business, and in such heat!”

There was a fractional pause. Then my brother enquired negligently — as tho' merely from politeness — “Mr. Sothey was a guest at The Larches?”

“Julian served Mr. Grey as consultant for nearly half a year,” Lady Elizabeth confided proudly. “And you know how much the park is admired! There is nothing to equal The Larches in all of Kent — tho' it is the Garden of England.”

“So I have been assured. I regret that I have never had occasion to tour the full extent of Grey's grounds,” Neddie replied smoothly. “But as you are intimate with Mr. Sothey, perhaps you have been more fortunate.”

“We were often invited to pay a call,” Lady Elizabeth said vaguely, “but that woman, you know — I could never approve her. To pay a visit might lend a certain countenance to her behaviour. And Julian was so very much occupied — but now that Mrs. Grey is dead, it would not do for him to remain in the house. Julian determined to come to us directly, the very day of the Dreadful Event.”

“Mamma,” Miss Louisa urged again.

“To devote six months,” Neddie observed, “to a single estate! Mr. Sothey must have found a great deal to employ his time.”

“Mr. Grey, I believe, has a passion for improvement,” Mr. Finch-Hatton interjected approvingly.

“And as Grey was called so often to Town, Mr. Sothey must frequently have acted in his stead,” Neddie mused.

The implication — that the landscape designer had found more than mere parkland to occupy his attention — was entirely lost on Lady Elizabeth.

“Julian is a very responsible, steady sort of young man,” Lady Elizabeth cried, “and if he possessed the fortune he ought, I should never say nay to him! Our Louisa and Julian have known one another since childhood, you understand — I make nothing of any trifling attachment, of course — but, then, one does not often meet with a girl as good-looking; and now that Julian is grown into such a sprig of fashion, all the young ladies are quite wild about him.”

“Mamma,” Miss Louisa wailed in exasperation.

“My dear — the time!” Mr. Finch-Hatton exclaimed.

“And how long will Mr. Sothey be with you, ma'am?” I enquired hurriedly.

“We are so fortunate as to have his undivided attention for several weeks,” Lady Elizabeth replied. “We met with him quite by chance at that unfortunate race-meeting, you know, and he told us it would at last be in his power to pay us a visit. I was overjoyed! I declare I could not stop talking of it, until that lamentable woman put flight to every other consideration.” This was the nearest approach she would allow herself to strangulation. “But, however, it is immaterial now. We expect Julian for dinner this evening.”

“Then you had certainly better be on your way,” Lizzy supplied, with her usual good breeding, as though she had never been jilted of a dinner partner herself, nor vexed beyond imagining by the quantity of effort undergone only this morning in the Godmersham kitchens. “I suppose we cannot hope to see you for several weeks, if Mr. Sothey intends to engross all your time.”

“As to that — I cannot say, to be sure — but we are to have quite a little dinner gathering at Eastwell on the morrow — should be charmed, if you are not engaged? You might meet Mr. Sothey, go over his plans for the grounds, and judge of his talents yourselves!”

“You are all kindness, Lady Elizabeth,” said my brother swiftly. A quelling look to his wife, who might have refused the invitation, went unnoticed by the Finch-Hattons.

“You are too good, ma'am,” said Lizzy distantly.

Lady Elizabeth smiled at her with infinite condescension. “Tho' Julian shall be much taken up with our little place, Mrs. Austen, I am sure that Mr. Finch-Hatton would be delighted to spare him, should you require a consultation about your grounds. I am strongly of the opinion that you should have that Bentley down — and I do not think I flatter myself when I say, that my opinions on matters of Taste are everywhere celebrated.”

And so the Finch-Hattons were shown to their barouche-landau, without having taken so much as a glass of Madeira — in a fever, one supposes, to welcome the genius of Eastwell Park.

We watched them the length of the sweep, and when they had crossed the little stone bridge and were labouring up the hill to the Ashford road, Lizzy muttered, “Insufferable woman! I quite detest her. Must we indeed go to Eastwell on the morrow? Could not we decline a full hour after we are expected, and afford them all the misery they have served to us?”

Neddie laughed and carried his wife's hand to his lips. “We cannot. You know it is impossible. Such a display of carelessness would expose you to Lady Elizabeth's scorn; and you could never bear to appear as vulgar as she. I fear that you have been bested by a Gendeman Improver, my dear — and there is nothing for it but to submit.”