“To the Outwood Lodge.”
“To-day? Was it not very damp in the woods?”
“Oh no, delightful!”
“Lena and I are old friends,” said Jenny; “too glad to meet to heed the damp.”
Here Raymond entered, with the air of a man who had just locked up a heavy post-bag at the last possible moment; and he too was amazed, though he covered it by asking why the party was so small.
“Rosamond has gone to meet her husband, and Cecil has her guest in her own domains.”
Then Jenny asked after his day’s work—a county matter, interesting to all the magistracy, and their womankind in their degree; and Eleonora listened in silence, watching with quiet heedfulness Frank’s mother and brother.
When Frank himself came in, his face was a perfect study; and the colour mantled in her cheeks, so that Jenny trusted that both were touched by the wonderful beauty that a little softness and timidity brought out on the features, usually so resolutely on guard. But when, in the later evening, Jenny crept in to her old friend, hoping to find that the impression had been favourable, she only heard, “Exactly like her sister, who always had the making of a fine countenance.”
“The mask—yes, but Lena has the spirit behind the mask. Poor girl! she is not at all happy in the atmosphere her sister has brought home.”
“Then I wish they would marry her!”