Lady Lyons had spoken the truth as regarded finding the "great lady," with whom alone Grace imagined she would find perfect happiness, and be "in the swim." She could hear of no one who had the slightest ambition to chaperone a young lady who was not very beautiful, not very rich, and nobody in particular. Grace had more than one interview with what she called hopeful people; and she was too fond of a joke, even against herself, not to repeat them, and even act the scenes, for Margaret's benefit.
But the plain fact remained that she could hear of nothing the least like what she wanted; and Grace, at no time a miracle of patience, got extremely irritable, and accused the world in general of combining together to defeat her.
Margaret, coming home full of the terrible scenes to which she could not accustom herself, was worried beyond description. The sharp contrast between this unfulfilled longing on the part of her sister for mere amusement, and the terrible—sometimes horrible—realities, to which she had just before perhaps been standing face to face, struck her painfully. She was but human herself, and there arose between them sometimes angry words and sharp retorts that filled her with dismay afterwards.
In characters so widely apart as theirs, it was only to be expected that a day would come when some tremendous crisis would show each how strained the sisterly chords now were.
After a scene between them, however, it was Margaret who tried to make amends for a recognised deficiency in her affection, by giving Grace something she wished for.
At this moment, with that curious disregard to the fitness of things which distinguishes some people, Lady Lyons made a successful effort to see Margaret—with a purpose.
As we know, poor Lady Lyons was one of those mothers who possess no real knowledge of their sons' characters, and she fancied that Paul (who never accused himself of it) was probably too shy to say a few necessary words to show Margaret that, when time had made things a little pleasanter for everybody, he hoped to find her able to respond to his devotion.
She thought that now movement was in the air, and Margaret was talking of going to Scotland, it would considerably help matters if she could say some little thing to arouse Margaret's attention, and to let her see that though Paul kept away (out of delicacy) he was hovering, so to speak, upon the horizon.
Lady Lyons therefore arrived upon the scene one day, and came into the drawing-room, to find Margaret much perturbed and Grace crying upon a sofa.
This was very interesting. Had the sisters been indulging in plain speaking, a matter in which the best of sisters occasionally show more of the licence of their relationship, than of the bond of union supposed to exist between them?