“There, I’ve made you nearly cry!” exclaimed her ladyship, putting her arm round her. “What an awkward idiot I am! But I’ll be more careful, dear; I will, indeed. And now go and put on that pretty bonnet of yours, and we’ll go and work havoc with the hearts of those foolish young men who hang on the rails in the park.”
Doris gave the butler the necessary information. Although she had only been three days in the house, Lady Despard had almost handed over the management of it to her, and the servants had commenced to look to her for their orders. It was a strange change from her old life of dependence and excitement, but it was a change which Doris found very grateful; the quiet of the magnificently-appointed house gave her a sense of repose which she needed greatly, and but for the memory of her loss of Jeffrey, but for the dull, aching pain which smote her heart whenever she thought of the man who had stolen her heart in Barton meadows, and tossed it almost contemptuously back to her, she could have been happy.
All day long she strove to put the memory of Cecil Neville away from her, but it haunted her sleeping and waking, and a great dread assailed her that all her life she should strive for forgetfulness and find it not.
As they drove in the park she leaned back in the carriage, and—lost to all sense of the crowded drive and the long lines of pedestrians, nearly all of whom plucked off their hats to the well-known Lady Despard—let her mind wander back to Barton meadows. She did not observe that she attracted as much attention as pretty Lady Despard herself, and woke with a start when her ladyship, with an arch little laugh, said:
“I never got so much notice before! I wonder why it is. Can you guess, Doris?”
“I? No,” said Doris, innocently.
“Really no? Well, for a really pretty girl I think you are the most modest I have ever met, my dear.”
Doris laughed and drew farther back.
“There!” exclaimed her ladyship. “I’ve put my foot in it again! Never mind, dear, we’ll go home now; I’m tired of bowing; besides it’s scarcely fair to me to do all, when half ought to be your share.”
Long before the evening Lady Despard had forgotten about the invited guests; but Doris dressed early and arranged some flowers in the small dining-room in which the meal was to be served; and thinking that it would be required, arranged as well as she could the music which lay in a confused heap in the rare Chippendale canterbury. Presently Lady Despard came down, fresh from the hands of her maid, in a costume of Worth’s, with which she had been entirely satisfied until she saw Doris’ simple frock of black lace with a yellow rose nestling in its bosom for her only ornament.