Mona laughed. "I have already told you that I don't mean to take you at your own valuation. In point of fact, I had much rather the people here knew nothing about Lady Munro. I should not like others to draw comparisons between her and Miss Simpson."
"I beg your pardon. I did not mean——"
"Oh, I know you did not mean any harm. It was my own stupidity; but, as I say, I should not like others to talk of it. Auf Wiedersehen!"
Alone once more, Mona clasped her hands behind her head, and looked out over the sea.
"Well, playfellow," she said, "have I done good or harm? At the present moment, as she walks home, she does not know whether to venerate or to detest me. It is an even chance which way the scale will turn. And is it all an affair of infinite importance, or does it not matter one whit?"
This estimate of Matilda's state of mind was a shrewd one, except for one neglected item. Now that the moment of impulse was over, the balance might have been even: but Lady Munro's name had turned the scale, and Matilda 'venerated' her new friend. Mona's strong and vivid personality would have made any one forget in her presence that she was 'only a shop-girl'; but no power on earth could prevent the recollection from returning—perhaps with renewed force—when her immediate influence was withdrawn. If a man of culture like Dr Dudley could not wholly ignore the fact of her social inferiority, how much less was it possible to an empty little soul like Matilda Cookson? for she was one of those people to whose moral and spiritual progress an earthly crutch is absolutely essential. She never forgot that conversation at Castle Maclean; but the two things that in after years stood out most clearly in her memory were the quotation about the martyrs, and Mona's relationship to Lady Munro. And surely this is not so strange? Do not even the best of us stand with one foot on the eternal rock, and the other on the shifting sands of time?
"How odd that she should be struck by that quotation!" mused Mona. "I wonder what Dr Dudley would say if he knew that the notes of the Pilgrims' Chorus, rising clear, steady, and unvarying above all the noises of the world, appealed even to the stupid little ears of Matilda Cookson. If the mother is no more than he says, there must be some good stuff in the father. Ex nihilo, nihil fit."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE COLONEL'S YARN.
The next morning brought Mona a budget of letters on the subject of Lucy's visit to the Riviera. Lady Munro had risen to the occasion magnificently. "If your friend is in the least like you," she wrote, "I shall be only too glad to have her as a companion for Evelyn. I have written to ask her to be my guest for a month, and the sooner she comes the better."