I turned to Isabel rather abruptly, as another thought struck me.
“Have they had any more visitors?” I asked. “Have you seen the man of the pocket-book again?”
Isabel shook her head.
“No,” she replied; “I am pretty sure no one but Dr Meeke has crossed their threshold since you were with us. How deadlily dull it must be for them—one day just like another all the year round, excepting the variety the seasons must bring!”
“And added to that,” I said, “this winter, the daily suspense as to what the doctor would say about their brother, who is their darling, I am perfectly certain. Oh, poor people, poor people!”
After this conversation I do not think the Greys were alluded to again during Isabel’s stay with us. She had told me all there was to tell, and even had there been more news, she would probably not have heard it, her father not being at Millflowers. The two or three weeks of her visit passed all too quickly, far too quickly for me, for more reasons than the pleasure of her society. She had scarcely left us when the preparations began for my stay in London, which, to suit our cousin’s—Lady Bretton’s—arrangements, was to be rather earlier than had been originally intended. Mother was a little surprised at my distaste for the idea of it. She knew I was not specially shy, nor constitutionally timid, like dear little Isabel, and I myself could scarcely explain why the prospect had so little attraction for me.
“It is just that I shall feel ‘out of it all,’” I said, “and Lady Bretton will think me stupider than I am, and will wish she hadn’t troubled herself about me! I know it will be like that, mother. I do wish you would give it up, even now.”
But mother, as I have said, could be firm enough when occasion called for it, besides which, I well knew that any appeal to my father would be worse than useless, and only irritate him. So mother ignored my last sentence altogether.
“It is a very bad plan,” she said quietly, “to put your own imaginings into your anticipations of another person’s feelings towards or about you. Nothing is more misleading—it blocks the way to any sympathy between you. I know Regina Bretton very well, otherwise I would not have accepted her proposal. She is the sort of woman who will enjoy your inexperience, as well as”—mother went on, with a little mischief in her tone—“smartening you up generally. She loves being appealed to; then, too, she is your godmother, and really thoroughly kind-hearted.”
The remembrance of this and other reassuring remarks of a similar kind did comfort me a little. Still more so the sight of my godmother’s kind, handsome face when I saw her for the first time coming downstairs to receive me on the afternoon of my arrival at her house. Nothing could have been more affectionate or un-alarming than her manner of welcome.