“Come up to bed, Fanchon, do!” said Brenda. “You look dead tired and won’t appear at your best to-morrow at the Castle. Good-night, Mrs Dawson.” Mrs Dawson said nothing further, but she thought for a minute or two and then went into her private sitting-room and opened a Standard of a few days old and read a certain advertisement in it without any comment. After a time, she put the Standard carefully away and went up to her own room, for she had doubtless earned her night’s repose.
As they were going upstairs, Brenda said in a somewhat fretful voice:
“Fanchon—I do wish you would not let people think that I gave you that bangle.”
“But why should you not let them think it?” asked the astonished girl.
“Well—of course people couldn’t expect a governess like me to give you such really expensive things.”
“Oh—but they don’t know what a darling you are,” said Fanchon, springing suddenly on Brenda with the sort of affection of a bear’s cub, and crushing that young lady’s immaculate evening toilet.
Now, Brenda was decidedly cross because Harry Jordan had not been as pointed as usual in his remarks, and she disliked—she could scarcely tell why—the expression in Mrs Dawson’s eyes when they had rested on the bangle. She was, therefore, not at all prepared for Fanchon’s rough caress, nor for Fanchon’s next words.
“I do wonder if you would be such a duck of a thing as to let me wear the bangle at Castle Beverley to-morrow.”
“Wear it there!” cried Brenda, real terror for a minute seizing her. “Of course not—could anything be more unsuitable! You must appear at Castle Beverley as the innocent little girl you are. You must not think of jewellery. You mustn’t allude to it, nor to your evening walks, nor to anything we do when you and I are enjoying ourselves together. Come, Fanchon, give me the bangle; I allowed you to wear it to-night as a great treat; but I want to put it away.”
Fanchon looked decidedly cross.