"Are you tired, Lotta?" Miss Paget asked, rather anxiously. There was something in Charlotte's manner of late that had inspired her with a vague sense of anxiety; some change which she could scarcely define—a change so gradual that it was only by comparing the Charlotte of some months ago with the Charlotte of the present that she perceived how real a change it was. The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual listlessness. "Are you tired, dear?" she repeated, anxiously; and Mrs. Sheldon looked round from her contemplation of the bonnets.
"No, Di, dearest, not tired; but—I don't feel very well this afternoon."
This was the first confession which Charlotte Halliday made of a sense of weakness and languor that had been creeping upon her during the last two months, so slowly, so gradually, that the change seemed too insignificant for notice.
"You feel ill, Lotta dear?" Diana asked.
"Well, no, not exactly ill. I can scarcely call it illness; I feel rather weak—that is really all."
At this point Mrs. Sheldon chimed in, with her eyes on a passing bonnet as she spoke.
"You see, you are so dreadfully neglectful of your papa's advice, Lotta," she said, in a complaining tone. "Do you like pink roses with mauve areophane, Diana? I do not. Look at that primrose tulle, with dead ivy-leaves and scarlet berries, in the barouche. I dare say you have not taken your glass of old port this morning, Charlotte, and have only yourself to thank if you feel weak."
"I did take a glass of port this morning, mamma. I don't like it; but I take it every morning."
"Don't like old tawny port, that your papa bought at the sale of a bishop of somewhere? It's perfectly absurd of you, Lotta, to talk of not liking wine that cost fifteen shillings a bottle, and which your papa's friends declare to be worth five-and-thirty."
"I am sorry it is so expensive, mamma; but I can't teach myself to think it nice," answered Charlotte, with a smile that sadly lacked the brightness of a few weeks ago. "I think one requires to go into the City, and become a merchant or a stockbroker, before one can like that sort of wine. What was it Valentine quoted in the Cheapside, about some lady whom somebody loved?—'To love her was a liberal education.' I think to like old port is a commercial education."