“Two ladies?” she inquired. “Did you hear their name? And did Major Winchester tell you to find me?”
Thomas was obliged to equivocate.
“Not—not exactly yourself persinly, ma’am, but one of the ladies.”
“All right, I’ll go at once,” and Beatrix, enchanted at the first act in the drama opening so auspiciously, rushed off.
“Of course it’s the girl and her mother, I’m sure of it, just because Rex evidently didn’t mean me,” she said to herself. “Mab shan’t be able to say I’m stupid; I won’t tell her how it happened, and she’ll be all the more impressed by my cleverness when she sees me hand and glove with the little fool at the very first go.” She looked very handsome and attractive as, moderating her rate of progress, she approached the front hall. It was a large square room, with corners screened off, containing couches and tables invitingly grouped. There were two fireplaces, in which for many months in the year great logs were always to be seen in glowing cheeriness. There was the usual display of antlered heads and stuffed glassy-eyed reynards and other trophies of the kind. To Imogen, new to English country life on this scale, it was entrancing, and as Beatrix in her trim sailor-blue serge, with wavy dark hair and the brilliant Helmont complexion and eyes, appeared at the curtained doorway, an unusual gentleness, almost appeal, in her expression and bearing, the poor little stranger’s heart went out to her with a great leap. Considerably to his surprise, much more considerably to his disgust, when Rex Winchester turned round from his instructions to Brewer on the hall steps, the two girls were, so to say, already in each other’s arms—literally speaking, they were just concluding their greeting with a kiss, while Mrs Wentworth stood by in smiling approval.
“Yes,” she said. “I was sure I was right, and you are baby Beatrix; just—let me see—two years and a few weeks older than Imogen.”
“How interesting!” said Trixie sweetly. “We must be great friends, must we not?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Imogen. “I’m so glad to have seen you first, as you are so much the nearest me in—”
“Is Alicia not in, Trixie?” interrupted Major Winchester. “I sent for her.”
His tone was dry, to say the least. Beatrix turned away for half a second: he did not see the flash of rage and malice in her eyes—she had calmed it down before she replied in the same soft, almost timid tones.