Certainly she spent a good deal of money
over entertaining, but Robert had lately made twenty times daily what
Lucia spent annually, over Roumanian oils. As for her acting, had she
not completely forgotten her words as Lady Macbeth in the middle of the
sleep-walking scene?
But here was Lucia, as proved by her note, and her A. D. C. Georgie,
wildly interested in the Guru. Mrs Quantock conjectured that Lucia's
plan was to launch the Guru at her August parties, as her own
discovery. He would be a novelty, and it would be Lucia who gave
Om-parties and breathing-parties and standing-on-one-leg parties, while
she herself, Daisy Quantock, would be bidden to these as a humble
guest, and Lucia would get all the credit, and, as likely as not,
invite the discoverer, the inventress, just now and then. Mrs
Quantock's Guru would become Lucia's Guru and all Riseholme would flock
hungrily for light and leading to The Hurst. She had written to Lucia
in all sincerity, hoping that she would extend the hospitality of her
garden-parties to the Guru, but now the very warmth of Lucia's reply
caused her to suspect this ulterior motive. She had been too
precipitate, too rash, too ill-advised, too sudden, as Lucia would say.
She ought to have known that Lucia, with her August parties coming on,
would have jumped at a Guru, and withheld him for her own parties,
taking the wind out of Lucia's August sails.
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