“I will leave you now,” said Helen.
“Do, I see we shall like one another in time, Miss Stanley; in time,—I hate sudden friendships.”
That evening Miss Clarendon questioned Helen more about her friendship with Cecilia, and how it was she came to live with her. Helen plainly told her.
“Then it was not an original promise between you?”
“Not at all,” said Helen.
“Lady Cecilia told me it was. Just like her,—I knew all the time it was a lie.”
Shocked and startled at the word, and at the idea, Helen exclaimed, “Oh! Miss Clarendon, how can you say so? anybody may be mistaken. Cecilia mistook—” Lady Cecilia joined them at this moment. Miss Clarendon’s face was flushed. “This room is insufferably hot. What can be the use of a fire at this time of year?”
Cecilia said it was for her mother, who was apt to be chilly in the evenings; and as she spoke, she put a screen between the flushed cheek and the fire. Miss Clarendon pushed it away, saying, “I can’t talk, I can’t hear, I can’t understand with a screen before me. What did you say, Lady Cecilia, to Lady Davenant, as we came out from dinner, about Mr. Beauclerc?”
“That we expect him to-morrow.”
“You did not tell me so when you wrote!”