“And, of course, you never thought of looking at your watch, Miss Mason,” the lawyer said, pointing to a quantity of jewelled toys which hung at the young lady’s blue sash.
“What’s the good of looking at one’s watch, if one’s watch won’t go?” said Miss Mason; “the sun has been going down ever so long, but the sun’s so changeable, there’s no relying on it. Mrs. Darrell has gone out in the pony-carriage to call upon some people near Woodlands.”
Eleanor Vane started at the sudden mention of a name which had been so familiar to her from her dead father’s lips.
“So I am all alone,” continued Miss Mason, “and I’m very glad of that; because we shall get to know each other so much better by ourselves, shan’t we, Miss Vincent?”
George Monckton had been walking between the two girls, but Laura Mason came round to Eleanor, and put her hand in that of Miss Vane. It was a fat little childish hand, but there were rings glittering upon it, small as it was.
“I think I shall like you very much,” Miss Mason whispered. “Do you think you shall like me?”
She looked up into Eleanor’s face, with an entreating expression in her blue eyes; they were really blue eyes, a bright forget-me-not, or turquoise blue, as different as possible from Eleanor’s clear grey ones, which were for ever changing, sometimes purple, sometimes brown, sometimes black.
How could Miss Vane reply to this childish question, except in the affirmative? She had every inclination to love the babyish young lady, who was so ready to cling to her and confide in her. She had expected to find a haughty heiress who would have flaunted her wealth before her penniless companion. But she had another reason for inclining tenderly towards this girl. She remembered what Mr. Monckton had said to her in the railway “However friendless or desolate you may be, you can never be so friendless and desolate as she is.”
“I’m sure I shall love you, Miss Mason, if you’ll let me.”
“And you’ll not be dreadful about triplets, and arpeggios, and syncopated passages?” the young lady said, piteously. “I don’t mind music a bit, in a general way, you know; but I never could play triplets in time.”