“I would have gone to the station to meet you,” she said, “but it is often more embarrassing than pleasant, when people are not quite sure of each other by sight. Then I knew, too, that you had your maid with you, and indeed, dear, as regards actual travelling, you are far more experienced than I; you have had so much of it.”
Trifling as was this remark, it helped to put me at my ease; it showed a wish on my hostess’s part to say something pleasant and gratifying. Surely it would be well if there were a little more of this sort of thing among us English people? As a rule, we are so terribly afraid of agreeable impulses, reserving all approach to commendation or admiration till absolutely sure of good grounds for such. Yet the same caution does not hold on the converse side. An air of cold criticism, in itself more discouraging very often than an openly disagreeable remark, is as a rule accepted as correct. May it not be that in this particular people deceive themselves, and at the root of our unattractive reserve and so-called terror of flattering, there often lurks an underlying spirit of reluctance to discern or allow, even to ourselves, the best points of another? Still worse, not impossibly, in many instances some more or less specious touch of jealousy?
I have wandered a little from the case in point, which is scarcely a typical one. On my kind cousin’s part there could have been no conceivable temptation to disparagement of me in any way. Not even of my youth, for its benefits were still practically hers. She had magnificent health, was still as pretty as she had ever been—some indeed said prettier; she was surrounded by friends, many of whom at least—most, let us hope—were attached to her by reason of her own unspoilt, unselfish character, far more than by that of her prosperous and important position.
There was but one blank page in her life. She had no children of her own, though the devotion of the best of husbands, as was hers, scarcely allowed her to realise this one great want.
Still, it was not everybody—by any means far from it—who would have had the kindly tact to receive me as she did, almost from the very first winning my confidence and setting me at my ease, amidst these new surroundings.
It was still quite early in the spring, and I did not feel overwhelmed by the contrast of town life with our almost exceptionally quiet one at home. This I was very glad of, though even in the midst of the season I doubt if my godmother would have allowed any extreme in the way of going out. What she did, she has often said, she liked to enjoy, and her happy nature was ready to do so. She threw herself with hearty interest into the many things which were new to me, though of course not so to her. I scarcely think any girl ever saw all best worth seeing in London under pleasanter auspices than I did.
And so the days and weeks passed on, bringing with them no twinge of home-sickness to me. My letters to mother and to Isabel, some of which, now faded and yellowing, have come into my hands again of late years, tell of a very happy passage in my life.
The time was already approaching for my return home, at least allusions had begun to be made to its probable date, when I one day received a note in an unfamiliar hand. I glanced at the signature as one sometimes does in such a case, before thoroughly mastering the contents.
But at the first moment it only added to my perplexity.
“Payne?” I repeated, “Edith Payne? who can she be?” Then the name of the southern resort where we had spent our last winter abroad caught my eye, also the words—“Rupert specially asks to be remembered to you”—and recalled to me the recollection of the nice boys and their gentle little mother whom we had made friends with. Circumstances had, after all, not tended to keeping up the acquaintanceship hitherto, for the younger brother’s joining Moore at school had been delayed till quite recently, though it was to this having now taken place that I owed the kind little letter and invitation which it contained.