CHAPTER II
"WANDERLUST"
For some minutes mother and daughter did not speak. Nora had turned her back, and was gazing out on to the pleasant country garden with eyes that saw neither the flowers nor the evening shadows which lengthened out over the lawn. She was still too profoundly occupied in the effort to appear indifferent, to cover over that one slip of feeling, to notice what was going on about her. She hated herself for having shown what she felt, she hated herself for feeling as she did; but no amount of hatred or self-condemnation would retrieve the one or change the other, and when she at last turned, aroused by the prolonged silence, the signals of anger and resentment still burned in her cheeks and eyes.
"Oh, I am a wretch," she cried impetuously. "Dearest, don't look so grave and distressed. It isn't your fault that you have such a disagreeable daughter. There, I ought to be a help and comfort, and instead——"
"An old woman does not need so much help and comfort as a young one," Mrs. Ingestre interrupted gently. "Just at present I am not suffering one-tenth of what you are suffering. And, dear Nora, don't treat me like some frail old wreck that must be shielded at all costs from the rough winds. Don't stand there and swallow up everything you are feeling because you are afraid of hurting me. It will only rankle all the worse. I would rather have your full confidence, however painful it may be. Come here and sit down beside me. Tell me everything you are thinking and feeling, honest Injun!"
The "honest Injun" brought a smile to Nora's eyes. Like everything else that she said or did, Mrs. Ingestre stamped the schoolboy phrase with an exotic, indefinable charm that was all her own. Yet beneath the half-gay appeal there lay a note of command, and Nora drew nearer awkwardly and hesitatingly, bereft for the moment of her youthful assurance and thrust back to the school days which at the age of nineteen are not so far away. She took the white outstretched hand and stood with bent head, frowning at the carpet. Suddenly she knelt down and buried her face in her mother's lap.
"I feel like a trapped rabbit," she murmured indistinctly.
A very faint smile touched Mrs. Ingestre's lips.
"A trapped rabbit, Nora? And who has trapped you, pray?"
"You have, and you know it. You always do!"