At another time he might have answered with some compliment, but the frank appeal confused him. He was unprepared for such simple delight, in which he could not but feel he had no more special share than twenty other things about them. Claudia had looked upon him as a playfellow—nothing else.
Nor could his vanity flatter him that she leaned upon him in this entry into a world of strangers. Quite unabashed, thoroughly direct, and changed and professional to her fingers’ ends, Fenwick, with annoyance for which he could scarcely account, saw amusement growing in his cousin Lady Wilmot’s dancing eyes. When they were left alone, it broke out.
“Oh, Arthur, Arthur, now I understand!”
“You understand nothing at all,” he said roughly. There was an occasional roughness in his manner, which cynics said was what women liked. Lady Wilmot only smiled.
“Do tell her not to be quite so solemn about it all,” she said. “She is so exceedingly determined we shan’t for one moment forget what she is here for, that she is for ever flaunting her calling in one’s face. But she’s quite a nice little thing.”
“Yes,” he repeated in the same tone, “quite a nice little things—whatever that may mean.”
“Don’t be rude. You might allow for my surprise, when I had made up my mind to a middle-aged being with spectacles and an umbrella, at being confronted with this young little person. I’m very glad—at least I shall be if you can persuade her to unbend, and if Peter doesn’t make love to her.”
“As if Peter had ever eyes for any one but yourself!”
But if Lady Wilmot was astonished, Fenwick himself had odd sensations. Beginning his acquaintance with the girl with a certain amount of pique at an indifference to which he was unaccustomed, and a determination to drag her out of it, he had taken a great deal more trouble than was usual with him, and yet had failed. He knew women well enough to own that he had failed utterly, and as his vanity could never endure defeat, the consciousness made him more keen to carry out his purpose. Then came this summer afternoon in which he had seen Claudia in a new light, when something of harmony in the girl’s nature with the fresh cool simplicity of a country world, touched him as nothing had touched him for years, and carried him back to his boyish days. For the first time he felt a sharp stab of annoyance when he found that she was up again on her heroic hobby-horse, and that Lady Wilmot’s eyes were brimming over with amusement.
“Good heavens!” he said to himself savagely, “I must speak to her, prevent her from making such a fool of herself. When she’s out of this preposterous nonsense she’s charming, but where are her eyes, where’s her sense of the ridiculous?”