When this news came they were snowed up at Chilton. Sport of all kinds had
been stopped, and Fareham, who, in his wife's parlance, lived in his boots
all the winter, had to amuse himself without the aid of horse and hound;
while even walking was made difficult by the snowdrifts that blocked
the lanes, and reduced the face of Nature to one muffled and monotonous
whiteness, while all the edges of the landscape were outlined vaguely
against the misty greyness of the sky.
Hyacinth spent her days half in yawning and sighing, and half in idle
laughter and childish games with Henriette and De Malfort. When she was gay
she was as much a child as her daughter; when she was fretful and hipped,
it was a childish discontent.
They played battledore and shuttlecock in the picture-gallery, and my lady
laughed when her volant struck some reverend judge or venerable bishop a
rap on the nose. They sat for hours twanging guitars, Hyacinth taking her
music-lesson from De Malfort, whose exquisite taste and touch made a guitar
seem a different instrument from that on which his pupil's delicate fingers
nipped a wiry melody, more suggestive of finger-nails than music.
He taught her, and took all possible pains in the teaching, and laughed at
her, and told her plainly that she had no talent for music.
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