For in that moment she renounced all—freedom, ambition—something within her whispering persistently that if she stayed it would be to become Arthur Fenwick’s wife. Her thoughts were sufficiently in a whirl for her not to know whether the conviction brought delight or terror, but they had fastened themselves upon him so continuously of late, that quite an unexpected feeling had sprung up in her heart, so that, if she were not in love with himself, she was nearly so with the image she had created. Her very indifference became a wrong when she reflected that it had caused him such suffering.
Lady Wilmot’s sympathy was of a light-hearted nature, it was not profound enough to enable her to plunge into depths, but Claudia’s was a sufficiently transparent countenance to betray that it cost her a struggle to utter these two words, and if there was a struggle, it probably had to do with more than the mere fact of going or staying. She therefore hastened to encourage her.
“I am more than glad,” she said smiling. “To-morrow that odious Lady Bodmin—as Peter isn’t here I may abuse her—departs, and though the Comyns are due, I am not quite sure that Mr Comyns and Arthur hit it off very well; at any rate, I don’t think Arthur cares much for either of them. So I particularly want him to have something pleasant to look forward to.”
Instinctively Claudia turned and faced her. “Will he care?”
She spoke the words scarcely above her breath, and was hardly aware that in a sudden craving for sympathy and counsel she had uttered them.
“Will he?” Lady Wilmot laughed out. “If you could have heard him to-day when I told him you had talked of going!”
Claudia walked on silently. The longing had changed to shrinking, and she wished that Lady Wilmot would leave her, but instead of this she ventured on another step.
“I assure you,” she said, “that Arthur is a dear fellow.”
“Oh, don’t let us talk about him any more!” cried the girl with sudden passion. She felt tossed, dragged, buffeted, a very shuttlecock of circumstance, impatient of the insistent tones in which that “Claudia!” still rang in her ears. Harry Hilton had also uttered her name, but it had not stirred her in the same imperative way, it had not been emphasised so disastrously, or burnt upon her memory. She trembled as she spoke, and Lady Wilmot looked at her with some bewilderment as to the cause of her emotion. She was not quite sure that it boded well.
“No, you are right, we won’t talk about him any more,” she agreed soothingly. “You have promised to stay, and that is all we wanted. I foresee that after all we shall have a good time, and I am so glad, for Arthur has always been my favourite cousin, though he is sometimes tiresome, and I have always tried to help him to what he wanted. It used to be jam out of the housekeeper’s closet,” she added, with a laugh.