In fact, Mr. Rivers had been so much pleased by Gertrude's consent to the Swiss expedition that he had given his wife no peace till she had come to arrange it. Gertrude was taken aback. 'Oh dear!' she exclaimed, 'I had forgotten all about it.'
'Forgotten!' Poor Mr. Rivers looked at her with all the amazement and reproach his lustreless black eyes could express.
'I remember now, George,' she faltered, colouring unreasonably; 'it was very kind.'
'But you promised, Daisy,'
'We will talk it over, George,' said her father, coming to her rescue, as in her increasing softness she looked down convicted. 'You see, I have not been consulted.'
George took this in earnest, and lumbered into an apology, while Dickie rather unrestrainedly laughed, and said, 'Grandpapa, when does Aunt Daisy consult you?'
'When she has made up her mind,' said the Doctor, with a glance at her.
But Daisy would at that moment have been thankful enough to consult him. True, the sentiment she had felt before had scarcely been love, so repressed and undeveloped had it been; and the flood of bliss, the wonderful sense of affection that had mastered her, was something entirely unlike the slow, measured way in which, even at the first moment of her half-consent, she had fancied yielding to Lance. In this one half-hour he had acquired a place with her so entirely independent of his being Felix's brother, nay, so substantially dearer than Felix himself, that she was half ashamed of her present self, half shocked at having called her former feelings by the name of love, and wholly and foolishly in despair at the notion of a six weeks' tour away from Lance.
Thus Ethel found her, when, on the break up of the dinner, she stole a few moments of consultation with the two young lovers before following her father and the Riverses to the drawing-room.
'Oh! Ethel, what shall I do?' Daisy was saying with tears in her eyes. 'Isn't it a judgment on me for ever saying I would go! I only did it because that Rupert baited me so, and I was so miserable I was ready to go anywhere out of his way.'