The town house must, necessarily, be sold. Mrs. Carmichael would feel most the change to cramped quarters; she had been a Somebody among other Somebodies in the East. Moreover, out there, the "K" was considered a foregone conclusion with regard to her husband.
Ferlie's own disappointment receded into the background as she measured the full force of this second blow which Fate had dealt Peter.
"It will mean——" she faltered after a long pause, and stopped.
"Anything a fellow can get," said Peter, his air-castles a blur of undefined hues at his feet like the ruined rainbows of melted snow.
Ferlie wondered if it were true about the darkest hour coming before dawn. Wished that she could hear Cyprian's views on the subject.
During the next few weeks, however, she found herself consoling, rather than consulting, people. Her mother and Peter were too immersed in their particular aspects of the trouble to question whether Ferlie herself did not require most support, freshly transplanted as she was from a world devoid of responsibility to one teeming with seemingly unsolvable problems.
CHAPTER V
"I suppose you had better go," said Ferlie's mother. "One had not intended you to 'come out' so soon; but as it is impossible to tell what the future will hold for any of us, it will be better for you to miss no opportunity of meeting people and making friends. Peter will no longer be able to bring men down from Cambridge for us to know."
That took her off on a different track from Lady Cardew's dance invitation to Ferlie.