Unfortunately, her hidden fear did not act very wisely. It made her watchful and almost irritable with Claudia. She could not say in so many words, “Don’t do this, don’t say that, your fate is trembling in the balance,” but she contrived to convey it in her actions, growing so evidently anxious over the most trifling movements or expressions, that the girl, in spite of indignant self-protests, became nervously inflicted by her companion’s distrust, and developed a new self-consciousness. She grew restless too.
“I do wish you would not give yourself so much trouble over my amusement,” she said one day to Mrs Leslie. “For instance, please don’t imagine that it is necessary for me to go to the club-house every afternoon.”
“One must go somewhere,” said her hostess vaguely. She could not explain that she had offered the pony-cart to Fenwick for him to drive Claudia into the country, and he had refused it.
“I don’t see that,” said the girl, with a laugh. She added after a pause, “What I really should like would be to bicycle over some of the country round. But Arthur won’t hear of it.”
“Don’t tease him about it, pray don’t,” said Mrs Leslie, with over—expressed anxiety.
Claudia looked at her.
“Why?” she asked, and such interrogations were becoming more and more difficult to answer. Mrs Leslie was hesitating over it when the young subaltern, Claudia’s neighbour at the Thorntons’ dinner-party, looked in.
“You’ll forgive my coming at this unearthly hour, won’t you?” he said. “Fact is, Major Leslie asked me to tell you that you and Miss Hamilton had better come out. Orders are given that the Scots Greys are not to be allowed to get back to barracks, and he thinks you might like to see the fun. Can you get along by yourselves? I must be off.”
Mrs Leslie jumped up with a sense of relief, but she was an imprudent woman, and her imprudence broke out.
“Why couldn’t Arthur have let us know?” she said in a vexed voice. “There, I have let the children go off, and Frank will be so disappointed!”