“Oh, they’ll like to come,” said Tory, “and I’m quite little enough to ask them.”
She made an indescribable face at Amethyst, and walked away as she spoke.
“Did you like your first party, my pretty girl?” said Lady Haredale, putting a caressing hand on Amethyst’s shoulder.
“Oh yes, mamma, it was delightful.”
“I am going to be the old mother now, you know, Tony. It is this child’s turn now.”
“You will have a great deal of satisfaction in teaching her,” said Tony, with an intonation which Amethyst did not understand, and a look she did not like.
But, as she shut herself into her own room, the images in her mind were full of colour and brightness. She felt that she had begun to live. The manifold relations of family life, the new acquaintances, even the new dresses and jewels, filled her with interest and pleasure so great that it brought a pang of remorse.
“Poor auntie!” she thought, “and now she is dull, without me!”
And, being too much excited to sleep, she sat down to write some of her first eager impressions to Miss Haredale; till, at what seemed to her a wickedly late hour, she heard a light soft foot in the passage.
She opened the door softly, and there was Una, still in her white evening frock, with shining eyes and burning cheeks, starting nervously at sight of her sister.