"It will be very lonely," said Lesley, with a little gasp.
"My poor child! I am afraid it will. I can tell some friends of mine to call on you; but I don't know whether they will be admitted."
"Where is—the house?" Lesley asked. She did not like to say "my father's house."
"In Upper Woburn Place, Bloomsbury. I believe it is near Euston Square, or some such neighborhood."
"Then it is not where you lived, mamma?"
"No, dear. We lived further West, in a street near Portman Square. I believe that Mr. Brooke finds Bloomsbury a convenient district for the kind of work that he has to do."
She spoke very formally of her husband; but Lesley began to notice an under-current of resentment, of something like contempt, in her voice when she spoke of him. Lady Alice tried in vain to simulate an indifference which she did not feel, and the very effort roughened her voice and sharpened her accent in a way of which she was unconscious. The effect on a young girl, who had not seen much of human emotion, was to induce a passing doubt of her mother's judgment, and a transient wonder as to whether her father had always been so much in the wrong. The sensation was but momentary, for Lesley was devotedly attached to her mother, and could not believe her to be mistaken. And, while she was repenting of her hasty injustice, the carriage stopped between the white globes of electric light that fronted a great hotel, and Lesley was obliged to give her attention to the things around her rather than to her own thoughts and feelings.
A waiter conducted the mother and daughter up one flight of stairs and consigned them to the care of a chambermaid. The chambermaid led them to the door of a suite of rooms, where they were met by Dayman, Lady Alice's own woman, whose stolid face relaxed into a smile of pleasure at the sight of Lesley.
"Take Miss Brooke to her own room and see that she is made nice for dinner," said her mistress. "His Lordship has ordered dinner in our own rooms, I suppose?"
"Yes, my lady. Covers for four—Captain Duchesne is here."