She could not refrain from this little touch of bitterness, yet she was sorry the instant she had spoken, deeply penitent, when she saw the look of pain in the thoughtful face opposite her. Why should she wilfully wound him, purposely, needlessly, she who so fondly loved him, whose keenest pain was to think that he had loved any woman upon earth before he loved her?
“Will you be at home to help me to receive my old friend, George?” she said, as they rose from the table.
“Yes, I will be at home to welcome Cancellor, and to protect you from his protégée’s influence, if I can.”
They were all three in the drawing-room when the Riverdale party arrived. Mildred and Mrs. Hillersdon met in somewise as old acquaintances, having been thrown together on numerous occasions, at hunt balls, charity bazaars, and other public assemblies. Pamela was the only stranger.
Although the scandalous romance of Louise Lorraine’s career was called ancient history, she was still a beautiful woman. The delicate features, the pure tones of the alabaster skin, and the large Irish gray eyes, had been kindly dealt with by time. On the verge of fifty, Mrs. Hillersdon might have owned only to forty, had she cared so far to palter with truth. Her charm was, however, now more in a fascinating personality than in the remains of a once dazzling loveliness. There was mind in the keen, bright face, with its sharply-cut lines, and those traces of intellectual wear which give a new grace, instead of the old one of youthful softness and faultless colouring. The bloom was gone from the peach, the brilliancy of youth had faded from those speaking eyes, but there was all the old sweetness of expression which had made Louise Lorraine’s smile irresistible as the song of the lurlei in the days that were gone. Her dress was perfect, as it had always been from the day when she threw away her last cotton stocking, darned by her own fair hands, and took to dressing like a leader of the great world, and with perhaps even less concern for cost. She dressed in perfect harmony with her age and position. Her gown was of softest black silk, draped with some semi-diaphanous fabric and clouded with Chantilly lace. Her bonnet was of the same lace and gauze, and her tapering hand and slender wrist were fitted to perfection in a long black glove which met a cloud of lace just below the elbow.
At a period when almost every woman who wore black glittered with beads and bugles from head to foot, Mrs. Hillersdon’s costume was unembellished by a single ornament. The Parisian milliner had known how to obey her orders to the letter when she stipulated—surtout point de jais—and the effect was at once distinguished and refined.
Clement Cancellor greeted his old pupil with warm friendliness, and meekly accepted her reproaches for all those invitations which he had refused in the past ten years.
“You told me so often that it was impossible for you to come to Enderby, and yet you can go to my neighbour,” she said.
“My dear Mildred, I went to Riverdale because I was wanted at Romsey.”
“And do you think you were not wanted at Romsey before to-day?—do you think we should not have been proud to have you preach in our church here? People would have flocked from far and wide to hear you—yes, even to Enderby Church—and you might have aided some good work, as you are going to do to-morrow. How clever of Mrs. Hillersdon to know how to tempt you down here!”