The girl was bending over a flower-glass: she closed her eyes, a throb of warm blood filled her veins.
“Oh, yes,” she said fervently.
“You must go without me, then. I thought going and coming both horrible. And I don’t consider that we were very lucky in our companions.”
A disclaimer sprang to Millie’s lips, though she forced it back.
“Don’t you?”
“Mr Wareham improved, but he was absent-minded and oblivious. However, they will all seem nicer looked at from a distance, and we are not likely to meet any of them often again.” Mrs Ravenhill’s cheerful prophecy pierced her child’s heart. Millie’s humble little desire reached no further than to the joy of seeing him now and then, but its roots ran deep, and to have them wrenched at so cruelly was sharp pain. It would have been worse had not her faith in Wareham flown to arms at this attack upon his word, for he had said he would call and see them, and nothing would have induced her to doubt him. Why should she? Mrs Ravenhill’s enmity—too strong a word—was due to an unacknowledged fear which now and then invaded her motherly heart. She imagined that in flinging a small dart at Wareham she was taking a wise precaution, unconscious that every attack sent Millie running to his side, eager for defence. He had been in her thoughts as she made the room look its prettiest that morning; she imagined this and that catching his eye, and provoking a smile of association. At the idea she smiled herself.
“We managed very well with our holiday, I think,” said Mrs Ravenhill cheerfully, “for by coming back early we shall have a beautifully peaceful time. We will enjoy ourselves, Millie, and do a number of nice things for which one has no leisure in summer and no weather in winter.”
Millie agreed.
“I suppose really there is no one left in London?”
No one, her mother earnestly hoped.