“And my weight’ll go up every day in this place, with the meals they have and never anything to do worth doing!”
She revolved in her own mind, as often before, foolish and unpractical plans for maintaining herself and Cecil independently of Aviolet assistance. But she knew too much of poverty to take her own flights of fancy seriously. Cecil should have all that the Aviolets could give him.
She held, however, the gifts of their bestowal to be confined within the limits of the material. For the things of the spirit, she was convinced that Cecil had only herself to look to, and the thought added weight to her blind determination of trusting to her own instinct rather than to Ford’s specious logic.
“Perhaps, after all, Lord Charlesbury will say something to Ford,” she thought. “I believe he’d help me if he could.”
The dimple deepened at the corner of her mouth and she smiled, with a curious pleasure at the thought.
Lord Charlesbury did not tell her whether he had spoken to Ford, but he talked to her most of the evening, and the exhilarating conviction of his liking increased in her. She even became rather exuberant in her triumphant consciousness of success, and her manner to Diana Grierson-Amberly took on an unconstraint that hitherto she had been unable to afford.
But at the foot of the stairs, when Charlesbury handed her a lighted candle, he said: “Good-night, and good-bye, I’m afraid. I shall be off early to-morrow morning.”
“Oh, I am sorry.”
He smiled at her.
“So am I. You won’t forget that you’re coming to visit Charlesbury and bringing the boy?”