"Because you have a consciousness of success?--in what do they call it?--the attempt to raise her tone? You have been trying to wind her up, and you _have_ raised her tone?"
"Oh, Lady Davenant, I don"t know and I don"t understand!" Laura broke out. "I don"t understand anything any more--I have given up trying."
"That"s what I recommended you to do last winter. Don"t you remember that day at Plash?"
"You told me to let her go," said Laura.
"And evidently you haven"t taken my advice."
"How can I--how can I?"
"Of course, how can you? And meanwhile if she doesn"t go it"s so much gained. But even if she should, won"t that nice young man remain?" Lady Davenant inquired. "I hope very much Selina hasn"t taken you altogether away from him."
Laura was silent a moment; then she returned: "What nice young man would ever look at me, if anything bad should happen?"
"I would never look at _him_ if he should let that prevent him!" the old woman cried. "It isn"t for your sister he loves you, I suppose; is it?"
"He doesn"t love me at all."
"Ah, then he does?" Lady Davenant demanded, with some eagerness, laying her hand on the girl"s arm. Laura sat near her on her sofa and looked at her, for all answer to this, with an expression of which the sadness appeared to strike the old woman freshly. "Doesn"t he come to the house--doesn"t he say anything?" she continued, with a voice of kindness.
"He comes to the house--very often."
"And don"t you like him?"
"Yes, very much--more than I did at first."
"Well, as you liked him at first well enough to bring him straight to see me, I suppose that means that now you are immensely pleased with him."
"He"s a gentleman," said Laura.
"So he seems to me. But why then doesn"t he speak out?"
"Perhaps that"s the very reason! Seriously," the girl added, "I don"t know what he comes to the house for."
"Is he in love with your sister?"
"I sometimes think so."
"And does she encourage him?"
"She detests him."
"Oh, then, I like him! I shall immediately write to him to come and see me: I shall appoint an hour and give him a piece of my mind."
"If I believed that, I should kill myself," said Laura.
"You may believe what you like; but I wish you didn"t show your feelings so in your eyes. They might be those of a poor widow with fifteen children. When I was young I managed to be happy, whatever occurred; and I am sure I looked so."
"Oh yes, Lady Davenant--for you it was different. You were safe, in so many ways," Laura said. "And you were surrounded with consideration."
"I don"t know; some of us were very wild, and exceedingly ill thought of, and I didn"t cry about it. However, there are natures and natures.
If you will come and stay with me to-morrow I will take you in."
"You know how kind I think you, but I have promised Selina not to leave her."
"Well, then, if she keeps you she must at least go straight!" cried the old woman, with some asperity. Laura made no answer to this and Lady Davenant asked, after a moment: "And what is Lionel doing?"
"I don"t know--he is very quiet."
"Doesn"t it please him--his wife"s improvement?" The girl got up; apparently she was made uncomfortable by the ironical effect, if not by the ironical intention, of this question. Her old friend was kind but she was penetrating; her very next words pierced further. "Of course if you are really protecting her I can"t count upon you": a remark not adapted to enliven Laura, who would have liked immensely to transfer herself to Queen"s Gate and had her very private ideas as to the efficacy of her protection. Lady Davenant kissed her and then suddenly said--"Oh, by the way, his address; you must tell me that."
"His address?"
"The young man"s whom you brought here. But it"s no matter," the old woman added; "the butler will have entered it--from his card."
"Lady Davenant, you won"t do anything so loathsome!" the girl cried, seizing her hand.
"Why is it loathsome, if he comes so often? It"s rubbish, his caring for Selina--a married woman--when you are there."
"Why is it rubbish--when so many other people do?"
"Oh, well, he is different--I could see that; or if he isn"t he ought to be!"
"He likes to observe--he came here to take notes," said the girl. "And he thinks Selina a very interesting London specimen."
"In spite of her dislike of him?"
"Oh, he doesn"t know that!" Laura exclaimed.
"Why not? he isn"t a fool."
"Oh, I have made it seem----" But here Laura stopped; her colour had risen.
Lady Davenant stared an instant. "Made it seem that she inclines to him?
Mercy, to do that how fond of him you must be!" An observation which had the effect of driving the girl straight out of the house.
XI
On one of the last days of June Mrs. Berrington showed her sister a note she had received from "your dear friend," as she called him, Mr.
Wendover. This was the manner in which she usually designated him, but she had naturally, in the present phase of her relations with Laura, never indulged in any renewal of the eminently perverse insinuations by means of which she had attempted, after the incident at the Soane Museum, to throw dust in her eyes. Mr. Wendover proposed to Mrs.
Berrington that she and her sister should honour with their presence a box he had obtained for the opera three nights later--an occasion of high curiosity, the first appearance of a young American singer of whom considerable things were expected. Laura left it to Selina to decide whether they should accept this invitation, and Selina proved to be of two or three differing minds. First she said it wouldn"t be convenient to her to go, and she wrote to the young man to this effect. Then, on second thoughts, she considered she might very well go, and telegraphed an acceptance. Later she saw reason to regret her acceptance and communicated this circ.u.mstance to her sister, who remarked that it was still not too late to change. Selina left her in ignorance till the next day as to whether she had retracted; then she told her that she had let the matter stand--they would go. To this Laura replied that she was glad--for Mr. Wendover. "And for yourself," Selina said, leaving the girl to wonder why every one (this universality was represented by Mrs.
Lionel Berrington and Lady Davenant) had taken up the idea that she entertained a pa.s.sion for her compatriot. She was clearly conscious that this was not the case; though she was glad her esteem for him had not yet suffered the disturbance of her seeing reason to believe that Lady Davenant had already meddled, according to her terrible threat. Laura was surprised to learn afterwards that Selina had, in London parlance, "thrown over" a dinner in order to make the evening at the opera fit in.
The dinner would have made her too late, and she didn"t care about it: she wanted to hear the whole opera.