‘Too much trouble.’
‘Then I will. I shall say you gave me leave.’
‘Indeed,’ said Arthur, fully roused, ‘you will say no such thing. You have not shown so much attention to Mrs. Martindale, that you need expect her to give way to your convenience.’
He walked away, as he always did when he thought he had provoked a female tongue. She was greatly mortified at having allowed her eagerness to lower her into offering to ask a favour of that wife of his; who, no doubt, had insisted on his coming, after having once failed, and could treat him to plenty of nervous and hysterical scenes.
Him Theodora pitied and forgave!
But by and by her feelings were further excited. She went with her mother to give orders at Storr and Mortimer’s, on the setting of some jewels which her aunt had given her, and there encountered Arthur in the act of selecting a blue enamel locket, with a diamond fly perched on it. At the soiree she had heard him point out to Emma Brandon a similar one, on a velvet round a lady’s neck, and say that it would look well on Violet’s white skin. So he was obliged to propitiate his idol with trinkets far more expensive than he could properly afford!
Theodora little guessed that the gift was received without one thought of the white throat, but with many speculations whether little Johnnie would soon be able to spare a bit of flaxen down to contrast with the black lock cut from his papa’s head.
There was nothing for it but to dwell no more on this deluded brother, and Theodora tried every means to stifle the thought. She threw herself into the full whirl of society, rattling on in a way that nothing but high health and great bodily strength could have endured. After her discontented and ungracious commencement, she positively alarmed her parents by the quantity she undertook, with spirits apparently never flagging, though never did she lose that aching void. Books, lectures, conversation, dancing, could not banish that craving for her brother, nothing but the three hours of sleep that she allowed herself. If she exceeded them, there were unfailing dreams of Arthur and his child.
She thought of another cure. There was another kind of affection, not half so valuable in her eyes as fraternal love; it made fools of people, but then they were happy in their blindness, and could keep it to themselves. She would condescend to lay herself open to the infection. It would be satisfying if she could catch it. She examined each of her followers in turn, but each fell short of her standard, and was repelled just as his hopes had been excited. One ‘Hollo, Theodora, come along,’ would have been worth all the court paid to her by men, to some of whom Arthur could have ill borne a comparison.