"Ladies don't sing, I suppose," said Lesley, after a little pause.
"Oh, yes, they do. He nearly always has a lady to sing. Why don't you go down on a Sunday afternoon? The club is open to friends of the founder, if not of the members, on Sunday afternoons. Don't Mr. Brooke and Miss Brooke always go?"
"I suppose they do—I never asked where they went," said Lesley, with burning cheeks. She remembered that they always did disappear on Sunday afternoons. No, she had not asked; she had not hitherto felt any curiosity as to their doings; and they had not asked her to accompany them. She began to resent their lack of readiness to invite her to the club.
"You might go down on Sunday afternoon," said Oliver, lazily. "I'm going: they have asked me to sing. Though you mayn't know it, Miss Brooke, I have a very decent tenor voice. Ethel is going with me. Won't you come?"
"I don't know," said Lesley, nervously. She bethought herself that she could not easily propose to accompany her father, and that Ethel and Oliver Trent would not want her. She would be one too many in either party. She could not go.
But Oliver read the reason of her scruples. "If you will allow me," he said, "I will ask my sister to come too. Then we shall be a compact little party of four, and we can start off without telling Mr. Brooke anything about it."
Lesley hesitated a little, but finally consented. She had a great desire to see what was going on in Macclesfield Buildings. But Oliver, it may be feared, believed in his heart that she went because he was going. And he resolved to bestow his society on her rather than on Ethel and Mrs. Romaine on Sunday. It was decidedly more amusing to waken that still sweet face to animation than to engage in a war of wit with Ethel.
Lesley thought of Oliver very little. Once or twice he had startled her by an assumption of intimacy, a softening of his voice, and a look of tenderness in his eyes, which made her shrink into herself with an instinctive emotion of dislike. But she had then proceeded to scold herself for foolish shyness and prudery—the prudery of a French-school girl, who was not accustomed to the ways of men. She had begun to feel herself very ignorant of the world since she came to her father's house. It would never do to offend one of her father's friends by seeming afraid of him. So she tried to smile and looked pleased when Oliver drew near, and she was all the more gracious to him because she had already quarrelled with Maurice Kenyon, who was even more her father's friend than Oliver himself. But what could she do? Mr. Kenyon had insulted her—the hot blood rose to her cheeks as she thought of some of the things that he had said. Insulted her by assuming that she could not appreciate her father because she was too careless, too frivolous, too foolish to do so. That she was ignorant, Lesley was ready to acknowledge; but not that she was incapable of learning.
Oliver had no difficulty in persuading his sister to make one of the party on Sunday afternoon. Indeed, Mrs. Romaine made the expedition easier by inviting Lesley to lunch with her beforehand.
"I asked Maurice and Ethel Kenyon, too," she said to Lesley, "but they would not come. Mr. Kenyon had his patients to attend to; and Ethel would not leave him to lunch alone."