“And Hilda enjoyed herself?”
Katherine smiled: “How glad you will be to see Hilda. Yes, enjoyed herself after a fashion, I think. She only stopped a month. She doesn’t care much for that sort of thing really.”
Katherine did not say, hardly knew perhaps, that the reproachful complaint of Mrs. Archinard’s weekly letter had cut short Hilda’s season, and brought her back to the little room in the little appartement, 3ième au dessus de l’entresol, where Mrs. Archinard spent her days as she had spent them at Allersley, at Dresden, at Dinard, at Florence. Change of surroundings made no change in Mrs. Archinard’s lace-frilled recumbency, nor in the air of passive long-suffering that went with so much appreciation of her own merits and other people’s deficiencies.
“But Hilda’s month meant more than other girls’ years,” Katherine went on; “you may imagine the havoc she played, all unconsciously, poor Hilda! Hilda is the most unconscious person. She fixes one with those big vague eyes of hers. She fixed, among other people, another old friend,” and Katherine smiled, adding with lowered tone, “Allan Hope.”
Peter was not enough conscious of a certain inner irritation to attempt its concealment.
“Allan Hope?” he repeated. “It is impossible for me to imagine little Hilda with lovers; and Allan Hope one of them!”
“Allan Hope is very nice,” Katherine said lightly.
“Nice? Oh, thoroughly nice. But to think that Hilda is grown up, not a child.”
Odd looked with a certain tired playfulness at Katherine.
“And you are grown up too; have lovers too. What a pity it is.”