“Oh, no, he looks much more sad and ill than he did in Italy. I think he will never forget Mysie. But they will be coming in, and I was to show you your room. There,” as Rosa followed her, “that is the school-room, and I must go there presently and see that the little girls get ready for tea.”
Rosa felt utterly bewildered. It is always startling to find one’s nearest and dearest possessed with a flood of new ideas and interests, acquired apart from ourselves, and this is specially the case with a girl’s first experience of independent life. Violante’s very accent and idiom had attained a more English turn, and there was an air of life and capability about her entirely new. She had opinions and ideas, and evidently was proud of her various occupations and anxious to show them off. How much of this was owing to her more vigorous health—the English air evidently being very favourable to her—how much to the mental awakening which some congenial experience often gives to girls sooner or later, and how much to the undercurrent of excitement that Hugh Crichton’s neighbourhood caused, Rosa could not tell. Certainly she was glad to see her little sister so bright and well; but she could not get over the idea of Violante’s secrecy, and forgot, perhaps, how hardly while pitying her sister she had judged Hugh in her hearing. Moreover, Rosa’s attention was not so entirely devoted to Violante’s affairs as had been the case last year. Possibilities were arising in her own life; but they were still too vague for her to wish to make a confidante of her young sister. There seemed to be what the Miss Greys called “a chance for Rosa;” and Rosa, it was thought, was not altogether averse to avail herself of it. She was very agreeable, and her foreign experiences and shrewd cleverness gave her an originality refreshing in a London young lady. She liked society; and, besides, she liked attention, in a sensible moderate sort of way; at any rate, she liked the attentions of the musical Mr Fairfax. He was not a very young man, and not at all handsome; but he had enough enthusiasm of character to appeal to Rosa’s sympathies, and enough of unconventionality to think her history and connections attractive rather than the reverse. He held a situation in the British Museum, and had some private means; so that he had been able to indulge his musical taste without being dependent on it for support. Nothing very definite had passed, but he was gradually giving Rosa to understand that he meant something serious; and she had welcomed this short absence as an opportunity for making up her own mind and testing her own feelings.
She made a very good impression on Miss Venning, and became friendly with Flossy, though secretly she thought her rather high-flying, and considered her objects of interest inadequate to the enthusiasm expended on them. She found that Violante, allowance being made for her imperfect education, was considered to have fair capabilities; and, with the help of her music and Italian, to be likely to be able to earn her living, under favourable circumstances. (“If I had a home for her to fall back upon,” was Rosa’s mental comment;) while she was much liked by teachers and companions. Rosa was constantly amused and surprised at seeing her busy and important; but, perhaps, she liked the moments best when Violante nestled down by her side, happy once more in her caressing presence. Rosa had arrived on Easter Monday, and was to stay till Saturday. The Confirmation would take place on the Friday, and on the Wednesday afternoon the whole party went into the woods to gather primroses, to renew the Easter decoration of Oxley parish church. The best primroses grew near Fordham; but, as nothing would have tempted Miss Florence’s steps in that direction, she ordained that they should walk towards Oxley—“it was a prettier view to show Miss Mattei.”
All along the opposite banks of the canal, between Fordham, Redhurst, and Oxley—and, indeed, out beyond Blackwood, on the other side of the town—were, at intervals, great oak copses, skirting the heath behind. Ashenfold was in the midst of them; they touched at one end the famous Fordham beeches, and at the other were lost in Lord Lidford’s park at Blackwood. The London road crossed the canal by a bridge at Oxley, where the woods were interspersed with villas, and a path, rough and dirty in winter, but charming in summer, led right through them to Redhurst and Fordham. A sort of hand-bridge led back to the Redhurst Road, opposite Ashenfold; further on there were only Redhurst and Fordham locks.
A considerable tract of copse had been felled the year before; and this spring the place of the underwood was supplied by the young sprouting oak-shoots and by myriads of primroses and anemones, ivy, lichen and moss, and all the beauties of woodlands in the spring. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny, with a sky the colour of the speedwells that were still hiding in the hedges. Birds sang and twittered; butterflies, like flying primroses, hovered about in pairs.
“There is nothing like a wood in spring,” said Florence; “and out there, Miss Mattei, the furze is getting golden, and even that ploughed field has a deep, rich colour under this wonderful sky.”
“Yes, abroad we don’t believe in English spring, but a day like this—”
“Vindicates the spring of the poets—and makes up for rain and east winds, doesn’t it?” The girls scattered over the wood in search of their primroses, Violante among them; while Rosa sat down on a log and talked to Miss Venning. The chatter and laughter of the girls sounded through the wood; and Flossy, in her great straw hat, with her hands full of primroses, came back towards them over the rough broken ground, tall, lithe, and blooming, like an incarnation of this fresh woody spring. Suddenly she paused, and exclaimed, as Hugh and Arthur, in rather unwonted companionship, came up the narrow path towards her.
“What? A great primrose-picking?” said Arthur.
“Yes, did you come to enjoy the woods?” she said.