II
Next day Lady Tilchester wrote and asked me to go to Harley. She had heard I was alone, and would be so delighted to have me for a week, she said.
I started two days afterwards. To see her would give me pleasure.
"How very white and thin you are looking, dear!" she said, as we sat together in her sitting-room the first afternoon I arrived. "You are not the same person as the very young girl who danced at the Yeomanry ball in May. How old are you, Ambrosine?"
"I was twenty in October."
"Twenty years old! Only twenty years old, and with that sad face! Nothing in life ought to make one sad at twenty. You look like a piteous child. I could imagine Muriel, with a dead bird, or a set of kittens to be drowned, looking as pathetic as you do."
"I know, I am ashamed of myself," I said, "Grandmamma would be so angry with me if she were here."
"Well, now we are going to cheer you up. The Duke is coming on
Saturday. He is not married yet, you see."
"Oh, tell me how the affair went," I said, smiling. "It—it's—a month ago we were at Myrlton."
"The silly girl preferred Luffy, but for the last weeks they both were hanging on. Miss Trumpet and her aunt were staying at Claridge's, and they tell me it was too ridiculous! Luffy lunched with them every day, and Berty dined in the evening."