She laughed as she spoke; her face was cloudless, her dark eyes serene. For one moment before he went away Carr found time to say a word to her.
"Did I not tell you it was simply a case of nerves?" he remarked.
CHAPTER XX.
Esther Helps was certainly neither a prudent nor a careful young woman. She meant no harm, she would have shuddered at the thought of actual sin, but she was reckless, a little defiant of all authority, even her father's most gentle and loving control, and very discontented with her position in life.
Morning, noon, and night, Esther's dream of dreams, longing of longings, was to be a lady. She had some little foundation for this desire. The mother who had died at her birth had been a poor half-educated little governess, whose mother before her had been a clergyman's daughter. Esther quickly discovered that she was beautiful, and her dream of dreams was to marry a gentleman, and so go back to that station in life where her mother had moved.
Esther had no real instincts of ladyhood. She spoke loudly, her education had been of a very flashy and superficial order. From the time she left the fourth-rate boarding-school where her father alone had the means to place her, she had stayed at home and idled. Idling was very bad for a character like hers; she was naturally active and energetic—she had plenty of ability, and would have made a capital shopwoman or dressmaker. But Esther thought it quite beneath her to work, and her father, who could support her at home, was only too delighted to have her there. He was inordinately proud of her—she was the one sunbeam in his dull, clouded timorous life. He adored her beauty, he found no fault with her Cockney twang, and he gave her in double measure the love which had lain buried for many years with his young wife.
Esther, therefore, when she left school, sat at home, and made her own dresses, and chatted with her cousin Cherry, who was an orphan, and belonged to Helps' side of the house. Cherry was a very capable, matter-of-fact hearty little girl, and Esther thought it an excellent arrangement that she should live with them, and take the drudgery and the cooking, and in short all the household work off her hands. Esther was very fond of Cherry, and Cherry, in her turn, thought there was never anyone quite so grand and magnificent as her tall, stately cousin.
"Well, Cherry," said Esther, as the two were going to bed on the night after Wyndham's visit, "what do you think of him? Oh, I needn't ask, there's but one thing to be thought of him."
"Elegant, I say," interrupted Cherry. She was looking particularly round and dumpy herself, and her broad face with her light grey eyes was all one smile. "An elegant young man, Essie—a sort of chevalier, now, wouldn't you say so?"