“Why didn’t he tell me? I should have been so much interested. He never said a word in his letters to let me know the pleasure in store for me.”
This expression was rather a strong one, Rhoda thought, considering that on the solitary occasion of her seeing Lady Sarah at the Mill-house that lady had hardly condescended to address a single word to her.
She hastened to give the reason for Sir Robert’s strange behaviour.
“He hasn’t recognised me, Lady Sarah,” she said.
“What!”
Lady Sarah paused a moment, in apparent incredulity, mingled with evident embarrassment and misgiving. Then she asked, quickly:
“Why didn’t you remind him?”
“Well, I—I thought I’d wait till you came, to see whether you would remember me,” she stammered.
“Of course I do. Although you have altered a great deal,” said Lady Sarah, with a gracious smile. “You were rather a pretty girl then, but you didn’t promise to develop as you have done.”
Rhoda smiled and blushed. Nothing, certainly, could be more engaging than Lady Sarah’s manner, nothing more flattering than her words. But still Rhoda could not but feel all the while that there was some reason for this surprising and even uncalled for graciousness. From all she had heard, Sir Robert’s wife, though a very charming and beautiful woman, was far from being always sympathetic or amiable in her own house, and there seemed to be no particular reason why she should be so very nice.