Mrs. Lancing's door was widely open, and she herself arrayed in all her glory as Caroline mounted the stairs and paused on the landing.
"Is he very furious?" asked Mrs. Lancing.
"May I admire you?" asked Caroline in reply. "This sort of thing is all so new to me. I have never seen any one in evening dress before, except once, and that was in a fashion paper." Her eyes had a glow in them as she scanned Camilla, over whose white clinging gown Dennis was just slipping a theatre wrap of pink chiffon and chinchilla. "How Betty would love to see you as you are now. She imagines you go to a fairy-world every night, and if she saw you she would believe in her dreams."
"I feel as if I were coming to pieces," Camilla laughed. "But I simply detest being hurried! Dennis, put a safety-pin in here, and you need not sit up. I have my key."
As she was passing out Mrs. Lancing paused by Caroline and kissed her lightly.
"You are a nice thing," she said affectionately, "and I wish you were coming with me. I shall take you to the play one night." Then gathering up her skirts, she rustled softly on to the landing and disappeared.
Sir Samuel's patience had evidently evaporated; he had emerged from the drawing-room, and was now expostulating.
"Don't swear too audibly," Caroline heard Mrs. Lancing say, with her rippling laugh, "or you will wake the babies, and then everybody will call you a monster!"
The girl's delicate brows met in a frown. Even in this far-off way she felt the arrogant familiarity of this man's manner towards Mrs. Lancing, and resented it, just as she had resented his attempt at impertinent familiarity with herself. She supposed, however, as Sir Samuel seemed to be so intimate, that he must be a connection, probably a near relative. Later on, however, when Dennis came up from her supper, and they went together through a minute examination of the children's belongings, Caroline learned casually, from the maid's chatter, that Sir Samuel Broxbourne was not really a relation—only a friend; and she found herself wondering a little why so refined and dainty a woman as Camilla should care for friendship with such a man.
This was not the only matter that seemed strange and even inexplicable where Mrs. Lancing was concerned. Naturally Caroline was a novice in life as it was lived in the world in which the children's mother occupied a prominent place; she was, indeed, to a great extent ignorant of the ways and doings of everyday people (since at school she had known nothing of what passed beyond the school boundaries, and in Octavia Baynhurst's house her outlook had been even more circumscribed), so that it was no great matter for surprise if she found herself unable to understand all that passed about and around her now. But what she lacked in actual experience, in definite knowledge, was filled in by natural wit and sympathy and intuition. It needed no deep study to grasp the best and sweetest traits of so human a being as Camilla, nor was it necessary for worldly knowledge to open her eyes to the glaring faults, the amazing contrasts in this woman's character.