designed enormous set purchased over a century and a half earlier by the wife of the original Rudolph Loverly on a trip to Dresden made exclusively for that purpose. Each Loverly Downs guest could only suspect she was eating not simply from genuine Meissen china, but from genuine antique Meissen china. But none of the young wives had any uncertainty about the flatware with which she would be eating. It wasn't made of any modern silver look-alike metal, nor ever of silver itself. It was made of gold.
Inasmuch as each guest had been individually brought to the reception by a different servant acting as her personal chauffeur, she might reasonably have expected the reception to be attended by many servants. It was, however, attended by none. Lady Loverly and her four guests were privately ensconced in the library. In truth, servants were neither necessary nor appropriate. Each Loverly Downs guest could easily reach the two platters of cakes, tortes or other goodies immediately before her. And the round table was exactly the correct size to enable the four seated guests not to feel crowded, but to be sufficiently close so the platters of goodies could be easily passed between them, an act intended by the hostess as something to help engender a feeling of congenial informality amongst her guests.
Lady Loverly began the reception by stating that in her younger days she had been a globe trotter who had had the good fortune of discovering delicacies from all around the world. She wanted to introduce her guests to the best of these, delectable treats they might never have had the opportunity of sampling. So rather than serving only one or two items, she instead had ordered each platter to contain an abundance of small, two or three bite size portions of a separate one of such delicacies. Working around the table's eight serving platters she named and briefly described the nation or culture from which the goody on each platter came and the ingredients of which it was made. Then she invited her guests to pass the platters around and try as many of these exotic snacks as they thought they might enjoy.
Setting on the table immediately in front of Lady Loverly were two silver pots, one a coffee urn, the other a tea samovar. While her guests were selecting pastries she explained that in her travels she had also found two beverages, a coffee and a tea, flavored with unusual spices. Everyone to whom she had ever served one or the other had found it delightfully unusual and delicious. Therefore, she said, she had selected these beverages for the present ladies whom she graciously called "her new neighbors". One by one she asked each guest whether she preferred coffee or tea. Then she poured the selected beverage into one of the cups arranged around the beverage pots, and handed or passed the cup on its saucer to the relevant young woman.
VII
Without exception every Loverly Downs guest at one of Lady Loverly's Coffee, Cake and Chat receptions was impressed with it and delighted by the arrangements for it. Especially she was thrilled and honored by the geniality, graciousness and generosity with which she had been welcomed. Anybody, of course, would be. But these young women were not just anybodies. They were not a cross-section of the population. They were residents of a community designed with careful deliberation to be a community of ambitious, upwardly mobile people, some of whom would, and all of whom aspired to be the social, political, professional and business leaders of the next generation. In their eyes Lady Loverly wasn't just a fabulously wealthy, nice old spinster. She was their ego ideal, the kind of person they all wanted to be, the kind of person they all thought every good and right thinking person should want to be. They were not merely impressed by Lady Loverly. They were in fully conscious but totally uncontrolled awe of her. Had the old billionaire been able to get up and run around the hundred or so remaining acres of her estate, the Loverly Downs wives would have eagerly run after her like lap dogs following their mistress with excited adulation.
Thus, though their hostess certainly was able to, and certainly did make her guests feel welcome, completely and unreservedly welcome, she was not able to make them feel kick-back and relax comfortable. Like spanking new second lieutenants at a reception given by their commanding general, the Loverly Downs wives knew where the head of the headless round table was, and knew who was sitting there. So while they smilingly responded whenever Lady Loverly spoke to them, they did not initiate any conversation. Nor, notwithstanding the third word in the reception's Coffee, Cake and Chat title, did they chat amongst themselves as they most certainly would have if the party had been hosted by almost anyone else in the world.
Their reticent behavior was neither unexpected nor unknown to Lady Loverly. She was, after all, the grandam of the city's and the state's social set and accustomed to awesome deference from those around her. So without there ever being a moment of awkwardness she took control of the chat part of the gathering. Indeed, this may have been her fundamental goal in hosting the receptions, for, announcing that her guests had probably wondered about the name of their community, she offered to tell them a little about the Loverly family if they wished. Of course, whether from curiosity or from accommodation of their hostess, all her guests eagerly asked her so to do. So she did. She delivered a lecture on the topic, a casual, informal, chatty one, to be sure, but a lecture nonetheless. It all seemed to be a continuation of her apparent purpose in creating Loverly Downs, to inform people of her family and to perpetuate its name.
The average person, quite likely, would have soon grown bored by the history Lady Loverly was reciting. But to these guests who venerated their hostess as the acme of society the story held never diminishing fascination. They found particular delight in the abundance of family details Loverly was using to embellish and enrich her story. Such details gave her guests a sense of being an intimate part of the Loverly saga. Perhaps because they were so eagerly listening to these details Lady included more of them. And as she talked, her account of family details drifted into personal memories. At first these were stories of her childhood, the kind of general stories any billionaire old lady might tell. But as she continued, her stories became more and more personal.
Few of the reception guests ever could remember exactly how the topic of Lady Loverly's narration drifted from descriptions of innocuous things, such as her beloved childhood nanny, into reminiscences of the one and only romantic love of her life. But none of them would or could ever forget what her hostess told them about this affair.
Everyone envied the wealth and status her family had brought to her, Loverly admitted, but no one knew how dearly these seemingly unequivocal benefits had cost her. These young wives who were her guests did not realize how much more fortunate they were than she had been, for they had all been free to find a mate, a man whom they loved and with whom they could share their lives. But because of her family this elementary but incomparable blessing had been denied her. When she was legally underage, she had fallen madly in love with a man, a man who passionately returned her love. But they had never been able to marry because he was only an employee at the estate, the chief gardener.
She went on to describe how overpoweringly handsome her love had been and what a masterful gardener he was. He was able to make anything grow, but particularly gifted with all kinds of orchids, Vanda orchids being his specialty. Although completely self-taught, he was the master of his craft. And everyone considered it remarkable that this young man, who had only a high school education, was someone to whom the professors from the agricultural college would often come for practical advice and information. The Loverly family was fully aware of his competence. They valued him highly, and considered themselves fortunate indeed to have him as a gardener.
But he was only a servant, the son of a local farmer. Moreover, he was a decade older than Lady Loverly. She and her gardener knew their love was ill-fated. The family would never accept him. And if the pair had tried to run away together the family would have had every private detective in the country seek them out. Then they would have found some disreputable judge willing to be bribed to annul the marriage, no matter how desperately the couple might have tried
to preserve it. So running away would only have gotten Lady shipped off to a boarding school in Switzerland and her gardener convicted on some trumped-up charge and sentenced to a chain gang in some dismal, distant swamp.
Because they knew the family would prevent them from ever marrying, the couple never revealed their love to any others. And as long as no one else knew of their love the family could not prevent the pair from privately physically consummating it. The two clandestinely and repeatedly met at secret trysts located all around the estate.
To convey the essence of her romantic affair, it would have sufficed for Lady Loverly to say the lovers met as often as possible. These young wives were fully cognizant of what happens at a romantic rendezvous. However, their storyteller did not restrict herself to a merely sufficient account. Swept away by her painful but passionate memories, Loverly described her meetings with her gardener lover in full detail, in full erotic detail. But her narration was not simply erotic. She went far beyond eroticism to a description so complete and graphic her guests considered it