CHAPTER V.
Mr.Wentworth, with his cane and his gloves in his hand, went every afternoon to call upon his niece.

A couple of hours later she came over to the great house to tea.

She had let the proposal that she should regularly dine there fall to the ground; she was in the enjoyment of whatever satisfaction was to be derived from the spectacle of an old negress in a crimson turban shelling peas under the apple-trees.
Charlotte, who had provided the ancient negress, thought it must be a strange household, Eugenia having told her that Augustine managed everything, the ancient negress included--Augustine who was naturally devoid of all acquaintance with the expurgatory English tongue.

By far the most immoral sentiment which I shall have occasion to attribute to Charlotte Wentworth was a certain emotion of disappointment at finding that, in spite of these irregular conditions, the domestic arrangements at the small house were apparently not--from Eugenia's peculiar point of view--strikingly offensive.

The Baroness found it amusing to go to tea; she dressed as if for dinner.