Thus it was a conflict of liberality, not a withholding of presents because she was already supplied, which Frances had to fear. She was compelled to accept with burning cheeks, and eyes weighed down with shame and reluctance, ornaments which a few weeks ago would have seemed to her good enough for a queen. Oh, what a flutter of pleasure there had been in her heart when her father gave her the little necklace of Genoese filigree, which appeared to her the most beautiful thing in the world. She slipped into her pocket the cluster of emeralds her aunt gave her, as if she had been a thief, and hid the pretty ring which was forced upon her finger, under her glove. “Oh, they are much too fine for me. They are too good for any girl to wear. I do not want them, indeed, aunt Caroline!”
“That may be,” Mrs Clarendon replied; “but I want to give them to you. It shall never be said that all the good things came from her, and nothing but trumpery from me.”
Frances took home her spoils with a sense of humiliation which weighed her to the ground. Before this, however, she had made the acquaintance of Mr Charles Clarendon, the great Q.C., who came into the cold drawing-room two minutes before dinner in irreproachable evening costume—a well-mannered, well-looking man of middle age, or a little more, who shook hands cordially with Frances, and told her he was very glad to see her. “But dinner is a little late, isn’t it?” he said to his wife. The drawing-room looked less cold by lamplight; and Mrs Clarendon herself, in her soft velvet evening-gown with a good deal of lace—or perhaps it was after the awakening and excitement of her quarrel with Frances—had less the air of being like the furniture, out of use. The dinner was very luxurious and dainty. Frances, as she sat between husband and wife, observing both very closely without being aware of it, decided within herself that in this particular her aunt Caroline again reminded her of papa. Mr Clarendon was very agreeable at dinner. He gave his wife several pieces of information indeed which Frances did not understand, but in general talked about the things that were going on, the great events of the time, the news, so much of it as was interesting, with all the ease of a man of the world. And he asked Frances a few civil and indeed kindly questions about herself. “You must take care of our east winds,” he said; “you will find them very sharp after the Riviera.”
“I am not delicate,” she said; “I don’t think they will hurt me.”
“No, you are not delicate,” he replied, with what Frances felt to be a look of approval; “one has only to look at you to see that. But fine elastic health like yours is a great possession, and you must take care of it.” He added with a smile, a moment after: “We never think that when we are young; and when we are old, thinking does little good.”
“You have not much to complain of, Charles, in that respect,” said his wife, who was always rather solemn.
“Oh, nothing at all,” was his reply. And shortly after, dinner by this time being over, he gave her a significant look, to which she responded by rising from the table.
“It is time for us to go up-stairs, my dear,” she said to Frances.
And when the ladies reached the drawing-room, it had relapsed into its morning aspect, and looked as chilly and as unused as before.
“Your uncle is one of the busiest men in London,” said Mrs Clarendon with a scarcely perceptible sigh. “He talked of your health; but if he had not the finest health in the world, he could not do it; he never takes any rest.”