Constantia offered a refuge. Her watching eyes divined something of Patricia’s unrest. She visited her that night at the period of hair-brushing and found her dreaming before a dying fire.
“You get up too early,” Constantia remonstrated, “it’s a pernicious habit. If you would come and stay with me in London, I would teach you to keep rational hours.”
“Would you have me, really?” cried Patricia, sitting bolt upright, with every sense alert to seize so good an opportunity of escape.
“Why, yes. I’ve been wanting to have you a long time. You had better come back to town with me to-morrow.”
“I’d like it better than anything in the world,” asserted Patricia, fervently and truthfully.
“I wonder if people ever grow up at all here,” Constantia said, smiling, “you are all so preposterously young, you know.”
“You were brought up here yourself.”
Constantia laughed outright. “But I have been educated since I married: that is when most people’s education does begin. We are only preparing for it before.”
“And if one never marries, one remains uneducated, I suppose.”
Constantia kissed her. “Your education is not likely to be neglected, my dear. Go to bed now, we will settle with Renata to-morrow.”