"As we are both women, I can hope that you won't call me variable. If you still want me as a companion, I think I will, after all, go with you to Nice. Looking into the matter more closely, I find I really have no affinity for sleet or influenza!
"Yours,
"Clodagh Milbanke."
Having despatched the note to Lady Frances Hope, she wrote two long, feverishly hasty letters—one to Laurence Asshlin at Orristown, the other to Nance at her school near London.
CHAPTER III
It was in the middle of February that Clodagh arrived in Paris on her journey home; and it was the end of April before that ardently planned return to England at last took place.
On a fresh, showery April afternoon when all London looked renewed and beautified by soft air and fitful brilliant sunshine, she alighted from the train at Charing Cross.
Her arrival in the lofty, unfamiliar station was very different from her arrival at the bustling, exciting Parisian terminus two months earlier. Then, she had descended from her train with the rapidity of one who sees in the least promising object the hope—if not the certainty—of interest; now, she left her carriage with the quiet indifference to outward circumstance that acquaintance with society teaches. Unconsciously she had learned to move as the women of the world move—the women who know themselves possessed of a certain value, and are faintly flattered, faintly amused, perhaps faintly wearied by the knowledge.
As she walked down the platform a momentary glimmering of disappointment crossed her face; and she turned to Simonetta who had come hurrying towards her.
"I thought Lady Frances would have met us," she said. "But I suppose she is waiting at the flat."