She had really felt that, in spite of Miss Scott’s admirable qualities, she was almost too hideous to be seen in town with two very smart girls. She might perhaps be taken for a maid.
As I have said, Ellen had nice wavy hair, though it was of no particular colour, and when she came down to breakfast the next morning, having arranged it as she did at home, the change in her appearance was surprising. She still had a red nose, a blotched cheek, and a bump on her shoulder, and she limped; but she no longer looked like a skinned rabbit. Evelyn and Gwendolen exchanged glances, and said in their evil hearts that the change was a step in the right direction, since it must be intended to please Lionel. Lady Jane smiled at her and nodded approvingly, but her prediction proved to be well founded, for neither the Colonel, nor Jocelyn, nor Claude, nor any one of the three Trevelyans, even glanced at the governess. And she had managed to tell Lionel of the advice his mother had given her, so that he showed no surprise.
On that day and the next, a large party of people came for the week-end, and when the house was full the governess and the girls had all their meals apart in the regions of the schoolroom, visited only by Lady Jane and occasionally by Lionel.
But he was obliged to be a good deal with the others, and incidentally with Miss Trevelyan. He was the last man in the world to fancy that a woman was falling in love with him merely because she always seemed glad to talk with him, and he was inclined to resent the way in which his mother did her best to bring him and Anne together at all times; but when there was a large party he preferred the society of the few whom he knew more or less intimately to the conversation of those whom he rarely met more than three or four times in a year, and had sometimes never met at all—for in London he avoided the crowd as much as he could. The consequence was that, on the present occasion, Anne saw much more of him than when the Trevelyans had been the only people stopping at the house.
If he had been wise in the ways of the world he would have known that when a woman has a fancy for a man she talks to him about herself, or himself, and has little to say about any one else; and he would have observed before now that Miss Trevelyan asked questions and led the conversation from general subjects to people. She seemed more interested in his brothers than in him, and particularly in Jocelyn—though she actually treated the latter with more coldness, or less cordiality, than the others.
“He has no ambition,” she said to Lionel. “I wish he would go in for ballooning!”
Lionel smiled a little. They were strolling along a path on the outskirts of the park, near the Malton road.
“I hadn’t associated ballooning with ambition before,” he answered, “but I daresay that if you suggested it as a career, he might take a fancy to it.”
“Not much!” answered Miss Anne, in a tone of conviction. “That would be just the way to make him do the opposite.”
“I doubt that. But do you mind telling me what the opposite of ballooning would be? Diving, I suppose, wouldn’t it?”