The speech was not judicious. Cicely raised her head proudly; there came an unusual light into the soft eyes, the lines about the gentle mouth grew hard.
“A perfect right,” she repeated. “Yes, of course they have a perfect right to give a ball whenever they please. But they have no right to expect me to go to it. I am engaged to their son certainly, but if they disregard my feelings and consider me no more than a stranger, it leaves me free to behave like one. How could I wish to go to a ball? Think of what sorrow we have had so lately—think of my father’s state oh! mother, it is most inconsiderate.”
“My dear, you are hardly reasonable,” said Mrs. Methvyn. “You are very honest, Cicely,” she went on. “Tell me, dear, is it not partly that you are hurt at not having been consulted about it at all, at not having been asked if the idea of such a thing was pleasant to you?”
Cicely was silent for a little. Then she said slowly, “Yes, I think it is partly that. But I don’t think it is from any small or mean feeling of vexation at not being consulted. It is that it seems to me that Trevor is different.”
“Wait till to-morrow,” said Mrs. Methvyn sagely. What she had said had done some good. It inclined Cicely to restrain her first vehemence of feeling, to receive more gently Mr. Fawcett’s explanation of what had led to this unexpected piece of dissipation. It sounded simple enough when, as Cicely expected, he came the next morning to talk it over with her. They had been speaking about balls, he said, one evening at Eastbourne, and Geneviève, who (though in some mysterious manner she had learnt to dance) had never been at any entertainment of so “wholly worldly” a kind, had expressed with girlish eagerness her intense wish to assister at a real ball. Half in joke, half in earnest, the idea had been mooted; Sir Thomas, who Trevor declared had altogether lost his heart to his pretty visitor, had taken it up and promised to open the ball with her himself, “and,” said Mr. Fawcett in conclusion, “the day was fixed for the twentieth of October, my birthday, you know, Cicely.”
“Yes,” said Cicely, “I remember.”
Her tone of voice aroused Trevor’s misgivings.
“Don’t you like the idea of a ball, Cicely?” he asked. “I am sure you used to like dancing, especially in the country. And I thought you would have been glad for Geneviève to be pleased.”
“Her notions of pleasure and mine differ,” said Cicely coldly, “if she can find it in amusing herself in a way her parents would disapprove of.”
“Rubbish,” said Mr. Fawcett. “What can they know about it? They would not expect Geneviève to behave differently from other people. She is ‘at Rome’ now, and they must take the consequences of sending her there.”