Grace threw herself back in the brougham with a good deal of petulance. They had been three weeks in London and had not achieved a single acquaintance.
As the carriage turned into Brook Street Grace suddenly caught sight of Sir Albert Gerald. She pulled the check-string, and called him by name.
Much surprised, he turned round and came up to her. She was so near Margaret that it was a pleasure to meet her.
"Come and see me," said Grace: "come to tea. This is Lady Lyons. I want particularly to see you—can you come to-morrow?"
"If you could see me early—but I leave town to-morrow afternoon for a few days."
"I will see you at any time. Eleven in the morning will find me clothed and in my right mind, in the stuffy little sitting-room we call our own."
"Till then, good-bye," he said, stepping back, and raising his hat.
"That poor girl looks frightfully ill," he thought, "as if she had not very long to live;" and he went on from this idea to think of Margaret. What a curious difference there was between the two sisters—the one so calm and sweet and so thoughtful, the other so restless and so frivolous.
He kept his word, however, and found Grace in a flutter of spirits, a huge Peerage and the Morning Post in front of her.
It was evident that there was some request trembling on her tongue, and that she was longing for the first conventional phrases to be over; the inquiries about Margaret were answered so indifferently, and Grace was all the time keeping a place in the Peerage open with a finger of her left hand.