"And go through an ecstatic meeting in public! All very well if he were a Frenchman or a German. Unfortunately he is English, and doesn't appreciate gush. Depend upon it, he will be much better pleased if you leave him alone to walk in when he chooses. Mittie, come away from that basket."
"He said he would be with us in time for table d'hôte, I know."
"Well—then, that is all right. We shall manage our drive first. I have some shopping to do, which I can't possibly put off. Mittie! do you hear? Leave that basket alone."
The little girl just glanced up with an air of placid independence, and went on fumbling. The raised tone of her mother's order, and the slight stamp of her mother's foot, produced no impression whatever. Mrs. Trevor was plainly not "used to command" successfully with her only daughter.
The ladies occupied a comfortable private sitting-room on the second floor of a first-class Paris hotel. The windows, thrown wide open for air, looked down upon a busy, not to say noisy street. It was not one whit too busy or noisy for Francesca Trevor, whose idea of happiness was to live in a whirl. Julia Dalrymple's tastes were not altogether the same.
Little resemblance might be found between the two sisters in outward appearance. Julia was tall; not slight, but very well proportioned, and in colouring a decided brunette. Whether she could be called pretty or no, might be, as Harvey had told Hermione, "a matter of opinion," probably depending a good deal upon passing moods. If so, the present mood was hardly favourable. She seemed restless and teased, and the black eyes, by nature soft, had a strained look which could not be called beautiful.
Mrs. Trevor was half a head shorter than Julia, rounded and plump in make. While really years the older, she was still far too young-looking for the mother of a child of eight. Though strictly not in the least handsome, she nevertheless managed so to make the best of herself as never to be entirely passed by. Of all earthly horrors, that of "being passed by" would have seemed to Francesca Trevor one most to be dreaded. So she had cultivated attractive manners, and every item of attire that she wore was always carefully studied with a view to effect. Of course she had still to wear mourning, but too much soberness was obviated by sparkling jet, and her flaxen hair was elaborately arranged under the slight apology for a widow's cap which rested on the summit.
Mittie Trevor, standing near a window, calmly searching with small fingers in her mother's work-basket, had inherited an abundance of that same fair hair, rising in flaxen masses over her brow and falling in flaxen masses to her waist; while with this she had inherited the same large black eyes, soft and serious, as her Aunt Julia. Mittie was an extremely pretty child, and just the child whom a weak mother would be disposed to spoil. Francesca Trevor had character enough of a certain stamp, but she never seemed to possess the slightest notion of training a child to obedience.
Few would have guessed Mrs. Trevor to be a ruined widow, almost wholly dependent for herself and her little girl upon the kindness of a brother-in-law. Not absolutely dependent, since she possessed some eighty pounds a year of her own; but Mrs. Trevor counted eighty pounds a small allowance for dress.
"You can drop me at the station, on your way to the shops, Francesca."