Isobel after this entirely blocked off Elma from any of her excursions. Even the visits to Miss Grace were over so far as Isobel was concerned, and Elma once more had that dear lady to herself.
She would not tell Miss Grace how it had happened that her cousin no longer accompanied her. Occasionally, however, Isobel stepped in herself and found her former audience in Miss Annie.
None of it affected Elma as it might have done. Isobel hardly spoke to her, certainly never when they were alone. It alarmed Elma how she could light up when anybody was present, any one who counted, and be quite companionable to Elma.
This all faded before the success of Mabel and Jean, who were now writing in the best of spirits.
And oh! "Love of our lives," Adelaide Maud, who was now in London, had called on them. It opened up a fairyland to both, for she took them to her uncle's house, and fêted them generally. Good old Adelaide Maud.
There was no one like her for bringing relief to the rich, and helping the moderately poor.
So Elma described her.
It seemed odd that it should be difficult to know Adelaide Maud except in an emergency. Elma, on the advice of Miss Grace, merely had to send her one little note when in London, with Mabel's address, and Adelaide Maud had called.
There were great consolations to the life she now led with Isobel. Cuthbert vowed he would come down to Elma's first dance. How different it was to what she had anticipated! She would go with Isobel and Isobel would be sweetly magnificent, and Elma would feel like a babe of ten. She longed to refuse all invitations until Mabel came home. Then the unrighteousness of this aloofness from Isobel beset her, and they accepted an invitation jointly.
Isobel ordered a dream of a dress from London. Elma was in white. Mabel and Jean sent her white roses for her hair, the daintiest things. Cuthbert played up, and George Maclean found her plenty of partners. Isobel was quite kind. Mr. Leighton had looked sadly on Elma on seeing her off.