“Will you let me carry you?” said Ralph.
“Yes,” said the child, with the air of a monarch bestowing a favour. “Your hands are so nice and long, not podgy little things like the waiter’s.”
The journey to the Stanhope having been safely accomplished, and the child comfortably installed in the back seat, Christine gathered up the reins, and with Ralph in the front seat beside her, drove off in the direction of Roslin.
“There is nothing I enjoy so much as driving,” she said. “It is the one real pleasure of my life.”
“Greater than such a triumph as you had last night,” said Ralph.
She glanced at him with a sort of surprise.
“Did you really think I cared for that?” she said. “How young you are—how worn and blasée you make me feel. I cared nothing at all for that ovation—was thankful when the din ceased and I could go home and be quiet. When one is miserable, there is at any rate some comfort in being miserable alone—you can throw aside your smiling mask, and so get something approaching to ease. It is off now, you see, and I am treating you as if you were a trustworthy, old friend, but then you are trustworthy, I could tell that the moment I saw you. Now tell me candidly, did not Mrs. Macneillie tell you she detested me?”
“No, but I heard something of your first acquaintance with them long ago,” said Ralph; and then he coloured and hesitated, feeling that he had perhaps said too much.
And oddly enough Christine felt that he understood all, and knew that he would soon find out how, having sacrificed everything to ambition, it now profited her nothing.
“Auntie,” cried a small voice from the back seat.