'Mayn't I go with you, mamma?' said the child.
Mrs. Vyner shook her head.
'No, dear, it is impossible. You must either go to grandmamma's or stay here with Miss Kelly. And if you don't go to the Towers, I must tell grandmamma that you don't want to go.'
'No, no,' said Flossie, 'don't do that, mamma; I'll go, but please don't be long away. And please tell grandmamma that I'm too little to be always in her room. Mayn't I have a nursery, like at home?'
'I thought you loved being a great deal with grandmamma,' said Mrs. Vyner in a disappointed tone. 'I don't understand you, Flossie. However, you are to have a sort of nursery, and there is a very nice young servant there who is to take you out and amuse you. For I should be sorry to disappoint Miss Kelly of her holiday when she has had none for so long.'
Florentia's face brightened a little.
'I'll go into the boudoir as seldom as I can, and never along the passage to the book-room,' she murmured to herself, but her mother did not catch the words.
It was a week or so after this—fully a week, it may have been ten days, after Ruth's accident—that Lady Melicent sent for her one morning to speak to her. Ruth felt just a little frightened; surely nothing was going to be said about the basin now, so long after?
But the old lady's kind face reassured her.