“It is ‘lonely,’ and you are not ‘lonely,’—you cannot be. There are people all around you. You are always busy. I think you are perfectly hor—horrid to me,” and with her air of fine ladyhood all gone she went stumbling down the steps. She had not changed so much, after all.
A few hours later her voyage across the Atlantic was already a thing of the past. Seated beside Sir Hervey and Lady Forrest, she was being driven swiftly through the streets of Liverpool to their home on the borders of Prince’s Park. Sir Hervey was fussing about the exactions of custom-house officers, his wife was patiently listening to him; so Nina had leisure for allowing her mind to run backward and dwell on the occurrences of the last few hours.
It had cost her a severe pang to part from her travelling companions. Perhaps it was on account of Miss Marsden’s kindness to her. Some day, though, they were to meet again. Her new friend had assured her of that.
Captain Eversleigh had also taken leave of her with the utmost friendliness; and Mr. Maybury had promised to visit Rubicon Meadows sometime for the fishing. Everybody had been kind but ’Steban,—the hard-hearted ’Steban. Only a brief, “Good-bye, Nina, take care of yourself,” and he was gone. He might have been a little tender at the last, especially as there were strangers about,—strangers who were observing and critical. Well, possibly absence would bring him to his senses, and he would find the happy medium between excessive devotion and cold neglect.
The carriage stopped. They were approaching one of Cowper’s “Citizen-delighting, suburban villas—highwayside retreats.” The footman descended from his box, sprang to the carriage door, and Nina found herself meekly following Lady Forrest into a house that at first blush seemed to her a dream of grandeur.
CHAPTER XV.
WHAT IS LOVE?
A week went by, a week of mingled delight and torture for Nina. She had never, outside novels, participated in entertainments as fine as those to which she was taken. The theatre was a revelation, the shops a long drawn out pleasure, and calls, tea-drinkings, dinner-parties, and drives into the country kept her in an almost continual state of enchanted and suppressed enjoyment. But yet she was not perfectly happy. Her pleasant hours were interspersed with melancholy ones. One day Lady Forrest, casting down her mouse-coloured eyes in her unobtrusive fashion, murmured, “I think I will give a dinner-party the day after to-morrow, my dear. A young man of very distinguished family for whom my husband has been investing money is in the city. Would you like me to invite your husband? It will be quite a small affair.”
Nina’s heart leaped for joy; but she merely said, “Thank you, Lady Forrest, I wish you would ask him to come.”