Audrey looked at her in amazement; then a change came over her own face. She allowed her hand just for an instant to touch the hand of Sylvia, and her eyes looked into the wild eyes of the shabby girl who was kneeling before her.
“Get up,” she said. “You have no right to take that attitude to me. As you are here, sit down. I do not want to be rude to you; far from that. I should like to make you happy.”
“Should you really?” answered Sylvia. “You can do it, you know.”
“Sylvia,” interrupted Evelyn, “what does this mean? You and I have been talking in a very frank way about Audrey. We have neither of us been expressing any enthusiastic opinions with regard to her; and yet now—and yet now——”
“Oh, let me be, Eve,” replied Sylvia. “I like Audrey. I liked her the other day. It is true I was afraid of her, and I was crushed by her, but I liked her; and I like her better now, and if she will be my friend I am quite determined to be hers.”
“Then you do not care for me?” said Evelyn, getting up and strutting across the room.
Sylvia looked at Audrey, whose eyes, however, would not smile, and whose face was once more cold and haughty.
“Evelyn,” she said, “I must ask you to try and remember that you are a lady, and not to talk in this way before anybody but me. I am your cousin, and when you are alone with me I give you leave to talk as you please. But now the question is this: I do not in the least care what Sylvia said of me behind my back. I hope I know better than to wish to find out what I was never meant to hear. This is a free country, and any girl in England can talk of me as she pleases—I am not afraid—that is, she can talk of me as she pleases when I am absent. But what I want to do now is to answer Sylvia’s question. She is unhappy, and she has thrown herself on me.—What can I do, Sylvia, to make you happy?”
Sylvia was standing huddled up against the wall. Her pretty shoulders were hitched to her ears; her hair was disheveled and fell partly over her forehead; her eyes gleamed out under their thick thatch of black hair like wild birds in a nest; her coral lips trembled, there was just a gleam of snowy teeth, and then she said impulsively:
“You are a darling, and you can do one thing. Let me for to-day forget that I am poor and hungry and very lonely and very sad. Let me share your love and Evelyn’s love for just one whole day.”