“She understands it right enough, and she’s jolly glad that it doesn’t apply to her. In ten days she comes to Wilverley.”
“Really!”
Lady Selina looked down her nose, and the shape of it may have encouraged her to remark:
“You know, child, that this friendship of yours with a rather unrestrained and undisciplined young woman is a certain anxiety to me. However . . .!”
With a gesture that might have become the mother of the Gracchi, Lady Selina dismissed Miss Tiddle.
But, till Cicely returned to duty the girl was lapped in tenderness and solicitude. Let no man assume too hastily that design lurked beneath soft glances and rare caresses. At any moment a few pencilled words upon a telegram might apprise Lady Selina of the loss of a son. Because such fear impended, she clutched desperately at her daughter, striving to hold in her masterful grasp the essential possession, strangely conscious that the spirit eluded her, that flesh and blood obscured the real Cicely. It was hardly credible that her girl did not think as she did upon matters supremely affecting conduct. Yet she dared not break down virginal reserves with direct questions. And she could remember that between herself and her mother there had been the same queer intermittencies of sympathy, the thus-far-and-no-farther limit that blighted full-blooming confidence.
You may be sure that she rejoiced unaffectedly at Grimshaw’s departure from Upworthy, meaning to speed him on his way with gracious smiles, hoping and praying that he would never return. During the five minutes that she devoted each night to prayer and introspection, she decided that Providence had deigned to stretch forth a delivering Hand. With fervent faith she beheld clearly the Divine Intention.
Cicely had not inherited this clarity of vision.
She went back to Wilverley a much-bewildered maid, almost at the mercy of circumstances and surroundings, feeling strangely invertebrate and listless. For the moment we may compare her to a cog on a machine. Being a true Chandos she intended to do her work efficiently. That would suffice till—till Tiddy came. Tiddy would revitalise her. Meanwhile, she contemplated with some dismay the certainty of talk not with but from the tremendous Mrs. Roden.
That good lady eyed her critically.