"Don't give me so many things!" she had said, almost with a stamp, the sudden, astonishing tears in her great eyes; when, after the first week, the new clothes began to shower upon her. "I can't help wanting them! I adore them! But I won't be a beggar—no! You will think we only came here for this—to get things out of you. We didn't—we didn't.'"
"My dear, won't you give me the pleasure?" Victoria had said, shamefacedly, putting out a hand to stroke the girl's hair. Whereupon Felicia had thrown herself impulsively on her knees, with her arms round the speaker, and there had been a mingled moment of laughter and emotion which had left Victoria very much astonished at herself, and given Hesketh a free hand. Victoria's solitary pursuits, the awkward or stately reserve of her ordinary manner, were deplorably interfered with, indeed, by the advent of this lovely, neglected child, who on her side had fallen passionately in love with Victoria at first sight and seemed to be now rarely happy out of her company.
After which digression we may return for a moment to Felicia on the loggia, admiring her new shoes.
From that passing ecstasy, she emerged resolved.
"We will stay here till Christmas—and—"
But on the rest of her purpose she shut her small lips firmly. Before she turned indoors, however, she gave some attention to the course of a white road in the middle distance, on which she had travelled with Lord Tatham the day he had taken her to Green Cottage. The cottage where the yellow-haired girl lived lay beyond that nearer hill. Ah! but nobody spoke of that yellow-haired girl now. Nobody sent flowers or books. Nobody so much as mentioned her name. It was strange—but singularly pleasing. Felicia raised herself triumphantly on tiptoe, as though she would peer over the hill into the cottage; and so see for herself how the Signorina Penfold took this sudden and complete neglect.
Tatham returned from London the following day, bringing Cyril Boden—who was again on the sick list—with him.
He arrived full of plans for the discomfiture of Melrose, only to be brought up irrevocably against the stubborn resolve which Netta, wrapped in an irritable and tearful melancholy, opposed to them all. She would not hear of the legal proceedings he urged upon her; and it was only on an assurance that nothing could or would be done without her consent, coupled with a good report of her father, that she at last consented to stay at Duddon till the New Year, so that further ways of helping her might be discussed.
Felicia, when the thing was settled, danced about Victoria's room, kissed her mother and ran off at once, with Victoria's permission, to ask the old coachman who ruled the Duddon stables to give her riding-lessons. Victoria noticed that she carefully avoided consulting Tatham in any way about her lessons. Indeed the earlier, half-childish, half-audacious efforts she had made to attract his attention entirely ceased about this time.
And he, as soon as it was evident that Mrs. Melrose would not take his advice, and that legal proceedings must be renounced, felt a natural slackening of interest in his mother's guests. He was perfectly kind and polite to them but Netta's cowardice disgusted him; and it was a personal disappointment to be thus balked of that public campaign against Melrose's enormities which would have satisfied the just and long-baffled feelings of a whole county; and—incidentally—would surely have unmasked a greedy and unscrupulous adventurer.