Aunt Caroline, shifting her ground, ceased to talk of the scheme as beneath contempt, but denounced it as dangerous and unwomanly.
She spoke freely of loss of caste; damage to prospects—vague and delicate possession of the female sex—and of the complicated evils which must necessarily arise from an undertaking so completely devoid of chaperons.
Uncle Septimus said little, but managed to convey to his nieces quiet marks of support and sympathy; while the Devonshires, after much preliminary opposition, had ended by throwing themselves, like the excellent people they were, heart and soul into the scheme.
To Constance, indeed, the change in her friends' affairs may be said to have come, like the Waverley pen, as a boon and a blessing. She was the somebody to whom their ill wind, though she knew it not, was blowing good.
Like many girls of her class, she had good faculties, abundant vitality, and no interests but frivolous ones. And with the wealthy middle-classes, even the social business is apt to be less unintermittent, less absorbing, than with the better born seekers after pleasure.
Her friendship with the Lorimers, with Gertrude especially, may be said to have represented the one serious element in Constance Devonshire's life. And now she threw herself with immense zeal and devotion into the absorbing business of house-hunting, on which, for the time being, all Gertrude's thoughts were centred.
After the sale, and the winding up (mysterious process) of poor Mr. Lorimer's affairs, it was intimated to the girls that they were the joint possessors of £600; not a large sum, when regarded as almost the entire fortune of four people, but slightly in excess of that which they had been led to expect. I said almost, for it must not be forgotten that Fanny had a modest income of £50 coming to her from her mother, of which the principal was tied up from her reach.
There was nothing now to do but to choose their quarters, settle down in them, and begin the enterprise on which they were bent.
For many weary days, Gertrude and Conny, sometimes accompanied by Fred or Mr. Devonshire, paced the town from end to end, laden with sheaves of "orders to view" from innumerable house-agents.
Phyllis was too delicate for such expeditions, and sat at home with Mrs. Devonshire, or drove out shopping; amiable but ironical; buoyant but never exuberant; the charming child that everybody conspired to spoil, that everybody instinctively screened from all unpleasantness.