Once Lydia embarked upon the butter-dish, offered by Mr. Palmer, with her own small knife, and then, leaving it in the butter-dish, found only a very large knife left beside her plate with which to spread it.
Shame and disaster threatened.
Lydia looked up, and her distressed gaze met that of a waiter. To her own effable surprise, she made a movement of her head that brought him deferentially to her elbow with the required implement. Simplicity itself!
Lydia inwardly decided that one need never be frightened, in the most unaccustomed surroundings, if only one kept one’s head and never betrayed any sense of insecurity.
Next day she had the gratification of being shyly told by Nathalie:
“Father said what a pretty face you had, Lydia, and what nice manners. He was so glad I’d got such a nice friend, and he said I might ask you whether one day your aunt would let you come and stay with us during the holidays.”
IV
When Lydia was fifteen, expectant of Honours in her examinations, highly placed in the school, and with a secret hope that the following term might see her Head of the School—and that, moreover, at an unprecedently early age—unexpected disaster overtook her.
The three placid years at Regency Terrace had been so little marked by any changes that she had forgotten that old sense of the insecurity and impermanence of life, bred of early days with her mother, and it came as a shock to her that anything should interfere seriously with her schemes.
Quite unexpectedly she fell ill.