“Phil said I was rude to you, Rachel, and I am sorry,” she muttered.
“Oh, never mind,” answered Rachel, whose own little face was quite swollen with crying. “I was so dreadfully, dreadfully unhappy, for I was afraid Ruby had killed you, Clementina.”
Clementina was now hurried away to her own room, where she had a hot bath and was put to bed, and where her mother fussed over her and grumbled bitterly at having ever been so silly as to come to such an outlandish part of the country as Avonsyde.
“I might have lost you, my precious,” she said to her daughter. “It was nothing short of madness my trusting you to those wild young Lovels.”
“Oh, mother, they aren’t a bit to blame, and I think they are rather nice, particularly Phil.”
“Yes, the boy seems a harmless, delicate little creature. I wonder if the old ladies will really make him their heir.”
“I hope they will, mother, for he is really very nice.”
In the course of the evening, as Clementina was lying on her pillows, thinking of a great many things and wondering if Phil was yet rested enough to leave his nest in the forest, there came a tap at her door, and to her surprise Phil’s mother entered. In some ways Mrs. Lovel bore a slight resemblance to Clementina; for she also was vain and self-conscious and she also was vastly taken up with self. Under these circumstances it was extremely natural that the girl and the woman should feel a strong antipathy the one to the other, and Clementina felt annoyed and the softened expression left her face as Mrs. Lovel took a chair by her bedside.
“How are you now, my dear—better, I hope?”
“Thank you, I am quite well,” answered Clementina.