“What, mother dear?” said the girl, looking up wearily from the book she was trying to read, “what do you want me to do?”
She had felt very miserable all day. Her anxiety about her father was by no means thoroughly allayed, and she knew that her chief support had failed her; and the impression left upon her by her strange interview with Mr. Guildford was still bewilderingly painful. Her mother was struck by her pallor and depression.
“You don’t look well, Cicely,” she said anxiously; “is there anything the matter?”
“I wish we were not going to Lingthurst,” said Cicely. “I cannot tell you how I shrink from the thought of it.”
It was within a very few hours now of the happy moment which Geneviève had been all day eagerly anticipating. “In four hours more it will be time to dress,” she had reminded Cicely with delight, a few minutes before. And Cicely had smiled and tried to think herself “cross-grained and ill-humoured,” for not being able to sympathise with her cousin’s enthusiasm. But it was no use. As the hours went on, she grew more and more disinclined for the evening’s amusement. “I cannot bear the thought of it,” she repeated to her mother.
Mrs. Methvyn looked troubled. “You used to enjoy dancing, Cicely. You used to be merry enough not so very long ago. What has changed you so?”
“Nothing, mother dear,” exclaimed Cicely, ashamed of her selfishness, “nothing truly. I am only rather dull and cross. Perhaps it is true as some say, that it is not good for people to live so much by themselves as we have done the last year or two.” She was silent for a minute or two, then she looked up again. “It is not all crabbedness, mother. It is partly that I can’t bear going to a ball when papa seems less well than usual.”
“That is what I was going to speak to you about,” said Mrs. Methvyn. “I don’t think your father is very well to-day. I don’t like leaving him. What I wanted to ask you was, if you would very much mind going without me.”
“Going without you,” exclaimed Cicely in surprise, “Geneviève and I by ourselves! How could we?”
“You might go very early and be with Frederica before any one comes, as if you were staying in the house,” replied Mrs. Methvyn. “I can easily send a note to explain it. She will be quite pleased. And I have no doubt she will ask you to stay till to-morrow, which will make it all quite easy.”