'And what did he say?' asks Lippa.
'He said,' replies Teddy, in the gruffest voice he can assume, trying to imitate Jimmy, '"More's the pity," and now you see I can just tell him you don't look pretty a bit, when you're holding somebody in your arms.'
'You must not say anything of the kind,' says she; it would be useless to exact a promise from him, probably be the way to make him repeat the conversation word for word; but Philippa has found out what she wanted to know, namely, that Jimmy is in London, and it causes her for the moment exquisite pain, to feel that he is not so far away, for though the Metropolis is a large place, there is always the chance of meeting one's friends in the street.
After deep thought Philippa has made up her mind to tell no one, of all she has heard and of all that has happened in consequence. She can rely on Ponsonby keeping secret the little he knows of it; but what is hardest to bear is the having nothing to look forward to, for the future looks, oh, so dark and dreary. Sometimes she feels that it cannot be true, and she shrinks with horror from the remembrance of the fate that may be awaiting her. But Mabel does not notice that something has changed her; that her step is not so light as it was, or her laugh so gay. How little we know of each other, although living the same lives, seeing the same people and things; we have all got an inner existence which no one but ourselves knows anything about, it is so shadowy and unreal, that contact with the outer world would crush all the beauty and poetry of it.
'I think we might go to the sea somewhere,' says Mrs Seaton, one day as she and Philippa are sitting together under the trees in the park, while Teddy is hunting for caterpillars, 'it is really too unutterably dull here, and it would do that boy good to have a change, what do you say to a fortnight or three weeks at Folkestone?'
'It would be very nice, I should think,' replies Lippa, who is watching the ungainly not to say peculiar movements, of a stout elderly female who is taking equestrian exercise.
'We could get rooms at an hotel,' goes on Mabel, 'you know some cousins of mine are there; and George said that I might do anything I liked, while he's up in Scotland; do you really think it would be nice?'
'Yes, I do,' Lippa replies, feeling that one place is the same to her as another. The stout elderly female has bumped away, and she is staring straight in front of her, when suddenly the colour rushes to her face leaving it whiter than it was before.
'Why, there's Jimmy Dalrymple,' says Mabel, 'and I do believe he's not going to see us. I really think he might, it would be quite refreshing to talk to somebody else besides you—'
'Am I such a dull companion then?'