“Things are going to pieces here, Mother.”
Lady Selina replied solemnly, with mournful resignation: “Our class is hit harder than any other.”
“But Uncle could sell some of his land.”
“Sell his land? What are you talking about? Sell the land that has been in our possession four hundred years——!”
Cicely murmured almost inaudibly:
“I think land poverty is awful.”
“We are all of the same mind about that, child.”
They duly returned to the Manor, where a pathetic surprise brought tears to Cicely’s eyes. Hitherto she had occupied a small bedroom, a virginal bower of blue-and-white. Across the corridor were Brian’s rooms, a bedroom and a sitting-room. During their absence Lady Selina had re-papered and re-decorated these two rooms charmingly:
“They are yours, my dear,” she said quietly.
It happened to be the first indication of the tremendous change in Cicely’s prospects. Till now not a word had been said by Lady Selina in remotest allusion to that change. But, at times, the girl had been conscious of intent eyes gazing interrogatively into hers, as if to say: “What will she do with it?” And, very rarely, when the pair were sitting together, Lady Selina would take Cicely’s hand, and hold it tenderly and yet tenaciously, as if it were a precious possession, more—an instrument to be used for a definite purpose.