“Oh no, aunt, I was only going to say, I don’t know that she likes me,” said Claudia. “She is a very cold girl, except with some few whom she seems to know well.”
“Well, I hope you are cold to her in return,” replied her aunt, though as she glanced at the bright eager face beside her, it was difficult to associate it with the word.
“I try to do as you wish—as mamma explained,” said Claudia gently. “One thing I am sure of, Aunt Mildred, and that is that they all think me the very happiest girl in the world. And I almost think I am.”
She stooped to kiss Lady Mildred as she spoke, and then ran off.
She had not forgotten to bring her rose-coloured spectacles with her, that was certain. And it was well for her that it was so. There were difficulties in her present life that her mother had feared, but that Claudia herself in her innocence was as yet but very vaguely conscious of. She was scrupulously anxious to follow her aunt’s directions as to her behaviour to her companions, but to one so open-hearted and genial it was not easy to be only coldly courteous and always self-restrained. And the struggle gave her a curious sort of timidity and uncertainty of manner which was not perhaps without its charm, but made it difficult to understand her, even for those who cared to exercise any observation and discrimination.
“How do you like her, Charlotte? I do wish you would tell me?” asked Gueda Knox one day, about a month after Miss Meredon’s advent.
“I don’t want to speak about her; I hate gossip,” said Charlotte impatiently.
“I’m not asking you to gossip,” Gueda replied. “I really want to know. I think you might tell me; it can do no harm, as I am going away almost immediately,” for the Knox family, all excepting the vicar himself, were obliged to spend fully half the year in the south of France for Mrs Knox’s health.
“That’s just the worst of it,” Charlotte replied impatiently. “If you hadn’t been going away I would not have minded so much, but without you I shall be thrown more and more with her.”
“That of itself is a pretty plain answer to my question,” said Gueda composedly. “Of course it means you dislike her.”