Mrs. Vandeleur threw up her little hands and sighed.
"Like all women," she murmured—"hankering after chains and slavery after being once freed from them. Our work together should absorb you, to the exclusion of such thoughts. But you shall go with me to-morrow, if you like. I knew that Wallace Armstrong's spirit was too fine to assimilate with that of Clare. Her destiny will lead her, late in life, to the arms of some stout and bald-headed stock-broker. When he is asleep, after dinner, she will flirt with his clerks or his partner, and be very happy; but you—life holds something very different in store for you. I suppose you must dree your weird. But remember, once you let love come into your life, trouble—terrible trouble—will come too!"
Secretly, Mrs. Vandeleur was very curious to see Laline and Wallace together. She interested herself readily in other people's affairs when these latter attracted her in any way—she liked to constitute herself a sort of deus ex machina in the lives of her friends, to pull the strings which moved their destinies; and the fact that both Laline and Wallace, whom she sincerely admired, declined to confide in her wholly, piqued her curiosity the more.
Against her niece Clare, on the other hand, Mrs. Vandeleur entertained a sentiment which was almost dislike; and she was annoyed to notice, on the following afternoon, when the two girls came down into the hall, ready dressed for their drive, that Clare, in a picturesque costume of red-brown cloth and beaver fur, appeared far more strikingly handsome at first sight than Laline, in the quietest of blue serge gowns and small black felt hat.
"Why have you those horrid, plain, masculine clothes on?" she inquired crossly of her secretary.
"They are my only walking things," Laline replied. "You know, dear Mrs. Vandeleur, I can't pay an afternoon call in those trailing white garments I wear in your room."
"Dear Lina would look like a ghost dropping into afternoon tea!" purred Clare, happy under the becoming framework of a red-brown velvet 'picture' hat and feathers. "I think she looks so sweet and neat in that dear little black felt hat and black cloth jacket!"
Mrs. Vandeleur snapped her glasses to and shut her mouth very hard. Then she ordered the girls into the brougham, and gave the coachman some order which they did not hear, but in consequence of which he drew up before a particularly smart millinery establishment on the way to the Strand.
Here Mrs. Vandeleur insisted that Laline should get out with her while Clare remained in the carriage, to which the little lady presently returned in triumph by the side of her secretary, in whose appearance a transformation had taken place by the substitution of a costly black velvet "picture" hat and graceful black velvet cape, trimmed with fur and lined with wine-coloured silk, for her former dowdy garments.
A flash of genuine anger passed into Clare's green eyes; but she was far too much afraid of her aunt to enter a protest, and declared, with apparent enthusiasm, that "dear Lina looked perfectly lovely; but then she looked that before!"