She fell again into sweet reflection while Alice giggled a little more. Then she herself stopped and thought also. After all perhaps—! One had to be practical. The tenor of her thoughts was such that she did not giggle again when Amabel broke the silence by whispering with tremulous, soft devoutness.
“Alice—do you think that praying really helps?”
“I’ve prayed for things but I never got them,” answered Alice. “But you know what the Vicar said on Sunday in sermon about ‘Ask and ye shall receive’.”
“Perhaps you haven’t prayed in the right spirit,” Amabel suggested with true piety. “Shall we—shall we try? Let us get out of bed and kneel down.”
“Get out of bed and kneel down yourself,” was Alice’s sympathetic rejoinder. “You wouldn’t take that much trouble for me.”
Amabel sat up on the edge of the bed. In the faint moonlight and her white night-gown she was almost angelic. She held the end of the long fair soft plait hanging over her shoulder and her eyes were full of reproach.
“I think you ought to take some interest,” she said plaintively. “You know there would be more chances for you and the others—if I were not here.”
“I’ll wait until you are not here,” replied the unstirred Alice.
But Amabel felt there was no time for waiting in this particular case. A yacht which “came in” might so soon “put out”. She knelt down, clasping her slim young hands and bending her forehead upon them. In effect she implored that Divine Wisdom might guide Mr. Robert Gareth-Lawless in the much desired path. She also made divers promises because nothing is so easy as to promise things. She ended with a gently fervent appeal that—if her prayer were granted—something “might happen” which would result in her becoming a Countess of Lawdor. One could not have put the request with greater tentative delicacy.
She felt quite uplifted and a trifle saintly when she rose from her knees. Alice had actually fallen asleep already and she sighed quite tenderly as she slipped into the place beside her. Almost as her lovely little head touched the pillow her own eyes closed. Then she was asleep herself—and in the faintly moonlit room with the long soft plait trailing over her shoulder looked even more like an angel than before.