Claridge’s,
Saturday, Nov. 26th.
Lady Ver went off early to the station, to catch her train to Northumberland this morning, and I hardly saw her to say good-bye. She seemed out of temper too, on getting a note, she did not tell me whom it was from, or what it was about—only she said immediately after, that I was not to be stupid. “Do not play with Christopher further,” she said, “or you will lose him. He will certainly go and see you to-morrow—he wrote to me this morning in answer to mine of last night—but he says he won’t go to the Zoo—so you will have to see him in your sitting-room after all—he will come about four.”
I did not speak.
“Evangeline,” she said, “promise me you won’t be a fool——”
“I—won’t be a fool,” I said.
Then she kissed me, and was off, and a few moments after I also started for Claridge’s.
I have a very nice little suite right up at the top, and if only it were respectable for me, and I could afford it, I could live here very comfortably by myself for a long time.
At a quarter to two I was ringing the bell at 200, Carlton House Terrace, Lady Merrenden’s House—with a strange feeling of excitement and interest. Of course it must have been because once she had been engaged to papa. In the second thoughts take to flash I remembered Lord Robert’s words when I talked of coming to London alone at Branches; how he would bring me here, and how she would be kind to me until I could “hunt round.”
Oh! it came to me with a sudden stab. He was leaning over Lady Ver in the northern train by now.