For Colonel Orpington was not going to Brookside. His daughter, as he said, had her aunt to look after her, and her intended to amuse her; and though there was nothing to be said against Skegby--that being the name of the tea-broker--who was a very good fellow, a self-made man, honour to British commerce, and that kind of thing, and was received everywhere, yet there were some people going to Brookside that the Colonel didn't care about meeting; and so, as the house in Hill Street was ready, he should go and take up his quarters there for a time--at all events until he had occasion to inspect the works and quarries in South Wales.
All his friends being still away from London, it was natural that the Colonel should seek for consolation in the resources of that new acquaintance which he had so recently made. He had met Fanny Stafford several times in the Park, and she had so far relaxed from her rigid formality as to accept two or three little dinners from him, as good as his taste could command and Verrey could supply, at which Madame Clarisse was always present.
That worthy lady's interest in her assistant seemed to have increased very much since her return from Paris. She was always insisting on Fanny's taking half-holidays, giving up work now and again, and coming into her private rooms for a meal and a chat; and in that chat, which was entirely one-sided and carried on solely by Madame Clarisse, the theme was always the same--the misery of work and poverty, the glory of idleness and riches, the folly, the worse than folly, almost crime, of those who spend their life in toil, and neglect to clutch the golden opportunity which comes to most all of us when we are young, and comes but once.
With these remarks--which might have seemed sententious in anyone else, but which Madame Clarisse put so aptly and so deftly, with such quaint illustrations, sounding quainter still in the broken English with which she interlarded her discourse, as to render it amusing--was often mixed a series of running comments on Colonel Orpington, which were laudatory, but in which the praise was laid on with a very skilful hand.
It is due to the Colonel to say that he left all mention of himself, whether laudatory or otherwise, to Madame Clarisse, and this was one of the greatest reasons for which Daisy liked him.
Beyond referring occasionally to his originally expressed desire to see the girl removed into some better position than that which she then occupied, and his readiness to help her in the achievement of such a position, Colonel Orpington never seemed to have any object in his never-failing pursuit of the girl's acquaintance beyond the perfectly legitimate one of amusing himself and her, and making the time pass pleasantly for them both. He was always gay, always cheerful, always full of good-humoured talk and anecdote, but at the same time always strictly respectful and well-bred in his conversation and in his manner. He treated the milliner's assistant with as much courtesy as he would bestow upon a duchess; and it was only in his occasional colloquies with Madame Clarisse that he permitted himself the use of phrases which but few of his compatriots would have understood, and which even in France would have been more easily intelligible in the Rue de Bréda than in the Faubourg St. Germain.
And what were Daisy's feelings towards Colonel Orpington? Did she really love or care for him? Not one whit.
Had she forgotten Paul and all their long walks and talks, all the devotion which he had proffered her, all her acknowledgments of regard for him? Had his image faded out of her heart during his absence, and was it there replaced by another and less worthy one? Not the least in the world; only that the absence of her lover had given the girl breathing space, as it were, to look around her, and to estimate her present position and her future chances at their actual value. And when thus seriously estimated, she found that the devotion which Paul had proffered her was, to her thinking, not worth very much; it was not sufficient to induce him to pledge himself to marry her: it was not sufficient to induce him boldly to defy the opinion of the world, and break off those shackles of family and society by which he was bound hand and foot; it was only sufficient for him to give up a certain portion of his time to be passed in her company, which was after all a sufficiently selfish pleasure, as it pleased him as much as it did her. And then, after all, what was to be the result?
In the early days of their acquaintance, before he knew the character of the girl he had to deal with, Paul had given certain hints which Daisy had rigidly ignored, or when compelled to hear them, had forbidden to be repeated; but since then they had been going on in a vague purposeless way; and though the boy-and-girl attachment, the stolen meetings, the letters, and the knowledge that they loved each other, were in themselves sufficient, and would last for ever, due consideration gave Daisy no clue to the probable result of that connection. And yet she loved Paul; had no idea how much she loved him until she was thinking over what her future, what a portion of her future at least, might be if passed with somebody else.
If passed with somebody else? There could be no doubt about what was intended, though he had never said a word, or given the slightest hint. The conversation of her employer--who, as Daisy was clear-headed and keen-witted enough to see, was in the Colonel's confidence--was full of subtle meaning. No need for the Frenchwoman to enlarge to Daisy on what she meant by the golden opportunity; no need for her to dwell upon the comforts and luxuries which were easily procurable by her--the dresses and equipages, the pomps and vanities which so many wasted their lives in endeavouring to obtain, and which might be hers at once.