But Lucy made no answer.
"Mona," she said a minute later, "do you think it is worth while to go on the river, after all? It is rather a fag, and why should we?"
Her voice was husky, and suggestive of infinite weariness. Mona rose from the piano, and deliberately, almost brutally, took the girl's face between her hands, and turned it to the light. She was not mistaken. The pretty eyes were dim with tears.
"Lucy," she said, "you and I have pretended long enough. What is the use of friendship, if we never fall back upon it in time of need? I want you to tell me what it was that spoilt your visit to Cannes."
"Nothing," said Lucy, with burning face, "unless, perhaps, my own idiocy. Oh, Mona, you dear old bully, there is not anything to tell! I thought I was always going to get the best of it with men, and now a man has got the best of it with me. It's only fair. Now you know the whole story. Despise me as much as you like."
"When I take to despising people, I imagine I shall have to begin even nearer home than with my plucky little Lucy. Will it be any use to tell me about it, do you think? Or is the whole story better buried?"
"I can't bury it. And yet there is positively nothing to tell. When I look back upon it all, I cannot honestly say that the flirtation went any farther than half-a-dozen others have gone; but this time, somehow, everything was different."
"Is he a friend of the Munros?"
Lucy nodded. "Yes—you know—Mr Monteith. He arrived at the hotel the night of our first dance. I was wearing my mermaid costume for the first time, and—I saw him looking at me again and again. He was not particularly handsome, but there was a sort of bloom about him, don't you know? He made me feel so common and work-a-day. And then when I danced with him I felt as if I had never danced with a man in my life before. I did not see very much of him;—Lady Munro was so particular:—but one afternoon a party of us walked up to the chapel on the hill, and he and I got apart from the others somehow. It was the first time I had seen the Maritime Alps, and I never again saw them as they were that day in the sunset light. It was like looking into a golden future. Well, he went away. I was awfully low-spirited for a day or two; but somehow, whenever I thought of that evening on the hill, I felt as if the future was full of beautiful possibilities. One day we went to Monte Carlo, and there I met him again. He asked if I would like him to come back for a day or two to Cannes, and I said I did not care. He never came. Sometimes I wish I had begged him to,—yes, Mona, I have sunk as low as that—and sometimes I think he must have read my poor little secret all along, and I could kill myself for very shame. Oh, Mona, I wish you could take me out of myself!"
"You poor little soul! Lucy, dear, it sounds very trite and commonplace; but, by hook or by crook, you must get an interest in your hospital work, and go at it as hard as ever you can."