She sealed this letter, and directed it to Frederick Walcheren, Esq., 308 Nevern Mansions, Earl’s Court, London, and placed it on one side. Her next concern was to see in what condition this unpleasant excitement had left her. But she found no reason to complain.
The exercise of her temper had made her cheeks rosier, and lent an extra brightness to her eyes. She was glad of this—glad that she had not given way to the weakness of tears, and swelled up her eyelids and made her face look puffy. She might meet Frederick during her drive. He spent most of his spare time in wandering about Hampstead in the hopes of meeting her. But she seldom drove out until the afternoon. Still, there was just the chance of a rencontre with her lover, and for that chance Jenny would have taken more trouble than this.
When she came downstairs again, an hour later, dressed in a tailor-made suit of light fawn tweed, with her jaunty little felt hat on her head, and her hands in white doeskin driving-gloves, holding a handsome ivory-handled whip, few people would have guessed the state of excitement she was still in, she looked so fresh and lovely and smiling. In the hall she encountered her mother, who had heard the wheels of the Ralli cart draw up to the door.
‘Out so early, my darling?’ Mrs Crampton said, kindly; ‘where are you going to?’
‘For a drive,’ answered the girl curtly.
‘But doesn’t it look a little like rain,’ continued her mother timidly, for she was half afraid of her idol, particularly when the idol was put out.
‘I don’t care if it does,’ replied Jenny, in the same tone; ‘I’m not made of sugar.’
‘But take an umbrella, darling,’ said her mother, anxiously, ‘and let Brunell hold it over you, if it should be wet.’
But Miss Crampton rejected all her suggestions with scorn.
‘If it thunders and lightens, and I get wet through and go into a consumption, so much the better,’ she exclaimed impatiently. ‘You and papa between you have contrived to make me so supremely miserable, that I don’t care what happens to me! In fact, the sooner I’m dead the better; and I’ve a good mind to take a dose of prussic acid and end it at once.’