Daisy's Aunt

by E. F. Benson

It had been settled that Jeannie was to live with Lady Nottingham till the end of the season, and the latter had given her two charming rooms in the Grosvenor Square house, so that she could make things home-like about her for the few weeks before she would go down to her own house in the country. Little household gods had arrived and been unpacked while she was in the country, and she occupied herself during this solitary day in London with the arrangement of them. There were not many, for she did not tend to buy, but there were a few "bits of things" which she had got in Rome, a Cinque-cento bas-relief, a couple of Florentine copies of the Della Robbia heads, and some few pieces of Italian needlework. All these took some little time to dispose satisfactorily in the room, and that done, she proceeded to the arrangement of her writing-table. She liked to have photographs there: there was one of Daisy and Diana, two mites of ten years old and four years old, lovingly entwined, Daisy's head resting on her sister's shoulder; there was one of Victor as he was now, and another as he had been when an Eton boy; there were half a dozen others, and among them one of Diana, signed and dated, which Diana had given her hardly more than a year ago in Paris.

All this arranging took up the greater part of the day, and she kept herself to her work, forcing her mind away from those things which really occupied it, and making it attend to the manual business of putting books in shelves and pictures on the walls; but about tea-time there was nothing more to occupy her here, and by degrees her thoughts drifted back to Bray and her friends—or were they enemies?—there. It was no use thinking of it or them, for there was nothing more to be contrived or planned or acted, no problem for her to dig at, no crisis to avert.

She had finished everything, and there was nothing left for her to do except be silent, and hope perhaps by degrees to win Daisy back again. How Daisy reconstructed things in her own mind Jeannie did not know, and, indeed, the details of such reconstruction she did not particularly want to know. She had taken Lord Lindfield away from the girl, for a mere caprice, apparently, for the love of annexation characteristic of flirts, while all the time she was engaged to Victor Braithwaite. And having made mischief like this, she had run away. It was like a child who, having from sheer wantonness set fire to something, runs to a safe distance and watches it burn.

Jeannie had ordered the carriage to come round at six to take her for a drive, and a few minutes before, though it was barely six yet, she had heard something drive up and stop at the door, and supposed that before long her maid would tell her that it was round. Even as she thought this she heard steps come along the passage outside, then her door opened.

Daisy entered. She was very pale, but in each cheek there flamed one high spot of colour. She stood quite still by the door for a moment, looking at her aunt, then closed it and advanced into the room.

"It is true, then, Aunt Jeannie," she said, "that you are engaged to Victor Braithwaite? I came up from Bray to ask you that, to know it from your own lips."

Jeannie did not move, nor did she give Daisy any word of conventional greeting.

"It is quite true," she said.

Daisy began pulling off her gloves.

"I congratulate you," she said. "It came as rather a surprise to me. Aunt Alice told me. I think she understood why it was a surprise to me. I wonder if you do?"