She apologised directly after upon hearing of Miss Fausset’s illness.
“I am a horrid ill-tempered creature,” she said; “but I really am beginning to adore Nice. It is a place that grows upon one.”
“What if I were to leave you with Lady Lochinvar? She told me the other day that she would like very much to have you to stay with her. You might stay till she leaves Nice, which will be in about three weeks’ time, and you could travel with her to Paris. You could go from Paris to Brighton very comfortably, with Peterson to take care of you. Perhaps you would not mind leaving Nice when Lady Lochinvar goes?”
Pamela sparkled and blushed at the suggestion.
“I should like it very much, if Lady Lochinvar is in earnest in asking to have me.”
“I am sure she is in earnest. There is only one stipulation I must make, Pamela. You must promise me not to renew your intimacy with Mr. Castellani.”
“With all my heart, aunt. My eyes have been opened. He is thoroughly bad style.”
CHAPTER VII.
AS THE SANDS RUN DOWN.
Mildred was in Brighton upon the third day after she left Nice. She had sent no intimation of her coming to her aunt, lest her visit should be forbidden. A nervous invalid is apt to have fancies, and to resent anything that looks like being taken care of. She arrived, therefore, unannounced, left her luggage at the station, and drove straight to Lewes Crescent, where the butler received her with every appearance of surprise.
It was early in the afternoon, and Miss Fausset was sitting in her accustomed chair in the back drawing-room, near the fire, with her book-table on her right hand. The balmy spring-time which Mildred had left at Nice had not yet visited Brighton, where the season had been exceptionally cold, and where a jovial north-easter was holding his revels all over Kemp Town, and enlivening the cold gray sea. A pleasant bracing day for robust health and animal spirits; but not altogether the kind of atmosphere to suit an elderly spinster suffering from nervous depression.