‘I wish you had come home sooner. We have had such a pleasant dinner-party. You would have liked to meet the professor.’
It was not the first time John had been sensible that that drawing-room was no place for sympathy; and he felt it the more now, because he had been living in such entire participation of his brother’s hopes and fears, that he could hardly suppose any one could be less interested in the mother and child in Cadogan-place. He came home, wishing Theodora would go and relieve Arthur of some of the care Violet needed in her convalescence; and he was much disappointed by her apparent indifference—in reality, a severe fit of perverse jealousy.
All dinner-time she endured a conversation on the subjects for which she least cared; nay, she talked ardently about the past dinner-party, for the very purpose of preventing John from suspecting that her anxiety had prevented her from enjoying it. And when she left the dining-room, she felt furious at knowing that now her father would have all the particulars to himself, so that none would transpire to her.
She longed so much to hear of Arthur and his child, that when John came into the drawing-room she could have asked! But he went to greet his aunt, who received him thus:
‘Well, I am glad to see you at last. You ought to have good reasons for coming to England for the May east winds, and then exposing yourself to them in London!’
‘I hope I did not expose myself: I only went out three or four times.’
‘I know you are always rejoiced to be as little at home as possible.’
‘I could not be spared sooner, ma’am.’
‘Spared? I think you have come out in a new capacity.’
John never went up his aunt without expecting to undergo a penance.