He stumped out the back way as he spoke, and Mrs. Connaught entered the parlour. When Lady Ellis was a girl of fifteen, twenty years before, and she an unmarried woman getting on for forty, they had seen a good deal of each other. Not having met since, each had some little difficulty in making the recognition of the other; but it dawned at last.
"I could not stay any longer from coming to see you," said Lady Ellis. "You seem to be the only link left of my early home and my dear parents. Forgive me for intruding on you today; had I waited longer I might not have been able to come at all."
She sat down and untied her bonnet, and laid hold of Mrs. Connaught's hand and kept it, letting fall some tears. Old Connaught stared more than ever; Mrs. Connaught, not a demonstrative woman, but simple and kindly, answered in kind.
"How long it seems ago! And you must have grown grand since then, Lady Ellis! But I never knew your people very much, you know."
"Ah, you forget! I grand!"--she went on, with a cheery laugh; "you will soon see how different I am from that. I came home to find nearly all those I cared for dead; you only are left, and I thought I must come down and find you out. Dear Mrs. Connaught, dear old friend, the longing for it got irrepressible."
Lady Ellis, it may be remembered, had pencilled down Mrs. Connaught's address at Mrs. Chester's, as supplied by Mr. Thornycroft. It might prove useful, she thought, on some future occasion. And the occasion had come.
The world, as she thought, had not dealt bountifully with her; quite the opposite. Not to mince the matter, she had to scheme to live, just as much as Mrs. Chester had, only in a different way. She liked good clothes, she liked ease and good living. Never, save for those few short days of her Indian marriage, had she known what it was to be free from care. Her father had liked play better than work; he and her mother, both, had a propensity to live beyond their income, to get into society that was above them, for they were not altogether gentlepeople. Extravagance, struggles, debts, pinching; all sorts of contrivances and care, outside show, meanness at home--such had been the experience of Angeline Finch, until some lucky chance took her to India as companion to a lady, and a still luckier introduced her to Sir George Ellis, an old man in his dotage. Two years of her reign as my lady--two blessed years; show, ease, life. Looking back upon them now, they seemed like a very haven. But Sir George died; it came to an end; and she home to Europe again, where she found herself a little embarrassed how to get along in the world.
Whether she had lost sight of her European acquaintances during her stay in India, or whether she had originally not possessed many, certain it was they seemed scarce now.
The vision, coming and going almost like a flash of lightning, of Mr. Thornycroft and his daughter, the gentleman's evident admiration of her, the tales she heard (perhaps exaggerated) of the style of living and the wealth at the Red Court, had set her mind a-longing. She thought often how desirable would be a visit there: what might it not lead to? The determination to effect it grew into a settled hope. It might almost have been called a prevision, as you will find from what came of it. Of all the ills that can possibly befal this life, Lady Ellis, perhaps from the circumstances of her early experience, regarded poverty as the most fatal. She had grown to dread it awfully. After that short interval of ease and luxury, the thought of having to relapse back to contrivances, debts, duns, difficulties, turned her sick. Ah, what a difference it is!--what a wide gap between!--a shoulder of mutton for dinner one day, cold the next, hashed the third, beer limited, a gown turned and turned again, shabby at the best; and a good dinner of three courses and wines, and the toilette of Madame Elise!
And so, Lady Ellis, working out her own plans, had come swooping down today on Coastdown and Mrs. Connaught.