A kind of puzzled sense of something that she did not understand crossed Virginia’s face.
“I would rather give them things than money,” she said. “Of course papa lets them have what is right.”
“Of course,” said Miss Seyton, with the same perplexing expression of indescribable amusement.
A good joke had for years been the solace, a bitter sarcasm the natural outlet, of a life which certainly had been neither prosperous nor happy in itself, nor glorified by any martyrdom of self-denial.
Miss Seyton was full of malice, both in the French and English acceptations of the word. She loved fun, and she could not see without bitterness the young, unworn creature beside her. To astonish Virginia offered an almost irresistible temptation to both these tendencies. Her evident unconsciousness of the life that lay before her, was at once so funny, and such a cruel satire on them all.
“So you built castles in the air about your relations?” she said, with an odd longing to knock some of these castles down.
“Sometimes,” said Virginia; “then Ruth told me about you; and two years ago she and I met Cheriton Lester and his cousin Rupert in London, and I used to talk to them, Cheriton made me wish to come home very much.”
“Why?” said Miss Seyton shortly.
“He used to tell her about the place, and he made me remember much better what it was like.”
“Cheriton will have to play second fiddle. The eldest brother is coming back from Spain.”