"Never mind! Never mind! I assure you I don't want a stranger. She'd be sure to sniff."
The girl who was cooped up in a room hardly bigger than one of the cages that swung below, opened her heart almost as soon as she had opened her door to the bright-haired lady who knocked on it, and this case was the beginning of a little feminist movement of Theresa's own. From one woman she had hints of the troubles of another, and was off immediately on the trail, her nose so keen for the scent that it disdained the more material odours assailing it. She went into strange places and met strange people, and she made mistakes; but she had more than her share of her sex's special gifts, and she had, too, some quality that drew the truth from others. The work absorbed her, she could not have done it well if she had not found in it something of a mission; but she also delighted in the perpetual show she made for her own eyes. She had a large stage to act on, no lack of parts to play, and so she was for ever in a state of mind that was not self-satisfaction, but an engrossment which made her every action of interest to herself, and the very tones of her voice as memorable as the tale some starving woman told her. Yet, with it all, she never acted falsely, and though she saw herself haloed by her own skill and popularity, she tried to counteract her tendency to glance upwards at that adornment. "But it's not so serious as it seems," she would say when she was troubled by her egoism. "It's only playing the same old game. I used to be a beautiful princess, and now I'm a clever young person. I always knew I wasn't a princess, and now I know I'm not nearly as clever as I like to think, so where's the harm? Nobody is deceived, and I have my fun." Nevertheless, she was oftener with a heartache than without one.
Neville complained of her activities.
"You are swamping us with your women," he said. "My geniuses never get a chance, and the old man says he has too much on his hands to attend to my consumptive butcher."
"I don't believe there is such a thing."
"Oh, honour bright! He's more important than that last girl of yours—you rather rushed the old man over that—and here's my butcher threatening to marry. We've got to cure him first. We must come to some arrangement and divide things fairly."
"I want to be fair, but one's enthusiasms——" She ended with a smile, and as he looked down at her he found her very good to see in her plain green frock, with a glint of winter sunshine on her hair.
Looking up at him, Theresa saw another face, and felt a dull throb in her breast. It would soon be a year since she had seen the mountains, a year since she had seen her friend. Strenuously she called him by that name, yet she would not obey her eager wish to write to him and so talk to him again: she was held back by some inherited instinct of waiting on the male, and she felt her spirit starving. It was hard to live for ever on her memories, and she turned to her old food. She must shine for some one, and she did it so glitteringly for her father and Simon Smith and Neville, that her pangs were dulled; but there returned the restlessness which, for a little while, had been banished.
Edward Webb had been to stay among the hills, and she thought she would tear her heart out with his going. She was not included in the invitation. James Rutherford, it was understood, was so uncertain in his behaviour, that her presence was not desirable, and her father had returned in some anxiety.
"What is the matter?" she asked, and the sound of her voice taught her more than she had wished to know, yet a joy that soared in agony came with the knowledge.