Winifred stood entranced.
“It is quite charming,” she said; “just the sort of nest one would long to have.”
Hertha was amused at the expression. She considered her big room much more than a “nest.”
“My young friend does not seem to realise how rare such quarters are in London,” she thought. “I suppose she is used to a bare, but perhaps not very small, country vicarage.”
“Yes, I am very lucky indeed,” she replied. “A room like this is a great ‘find’ in London.”
“Is it really?” said Winifred, peering up at the ceiling. “Oh dear, it is just what I should like.”
Miss Norreys repressed the desire to tell her that, as things were with her, she might as well wish for Aladdin’s palace at once.
“She will learn by experience,” she said to herself.
“And the whole thing—your life, yourself,” Winifred went on—“it is like the realisation of a dream to me. Your splendid independence and freedom. Just think of the contrast between you and an ordinary girl living at home in slavery, or at least in a sort of prolonged childhood, with no personal standing, no liberty to follow her own intuitions.”
A shadow crossed Hertha’s beautiful forehead.