From her corner, Cicely, pale and silent and discomposed, saw it all; saw Trevor’s start of unmistakable admiration, Geneviève’s pretty self-consciousness, saw them shake hands and murmur a word or two as if no such person as herself were in existence. She saw it, but, with instinctive loyalty, before she had allowed herself to realise the position, she forced herself to come forward.
“You did not expect to find any one here already, did you, Trevor?” she said lightly. “Mother made us come at least an hour too soon that we might be with Lady Frederica before any one else comes—we are supposed to be staying in the house, you know.”
Before she had finished the last sentence, Mr. Fawcett had perfectly recovered himself.
“I am so very sorry to hear your father is not as well as usual to-day,” he said kindly, as he shook hands. “But I am glad it was not bad enough to prevent you two coming. There is not much wrong, is there?”
“No, at least I hope not,” replied Cicely. “I have not thought him as well as usual for some time.”
She turned away and Trevor did not reply. Just then Lady Frederica and a bevy of ladies rustled into the room, and a chatter of greetings and introductions and regrets that “the poor Colonel was not well and poor dear Mrs. Methvyn unable to leave him” began.
You are not looking well, dear Cicely,” said Trevor’s mother, in her soft, plaintive voice, and somehow even these commonplace words brought the tears into the girl’s eyes. “He never noticed that I looked ill,” she thought, as she replied to Lady Frederica’s expressions of sympathy, and there rushed through her mind in sharp and painful contrast with Trevor’s indifference, the remembrance of how Mr. Guildford’s firm cheery voice had grown gentle and anxious that morning when he first remarked her paleness and agitation.
“And how perfectly lovely your cousin looks!” continued Lady Frederica. “Pretty as I thought her, I had no idea till to-night how lovely she was.”
“Yes,” said Cicely stoutly, “I think she looks as pretty as anything one can imagine. Do you like our dresses, Lady Frederica? They are from Madame Néret’s.”
“Geneviève’s is lovely, quite lovely,” answered Lady Frederica. “And yours—ah! yes, it is very pretty, Chambéry gauze, I see,” she remarked, putting up her eye glass and surveying Cicely’s draperies with a critical air. “Yes, a beautiful material and everlasting wear—I have had my Chambérys dyed black many a time—I was not sure if yours was a new dress or not.”