“Oh, quite able; oh, quite, quite well. It was only for a moment. I was—frightened, I think.”
“But you will never be frightened any more,” said Lady Markham, drawing the girl’s arm through her own, leading her away. Frances was giddy still, and stumbled as she went, though she had pledged herself never to be frightened again. She went in a dream up the softly carpeted stairs. She knew what handsome rooms were, the lofty bare grandeur of an Italian palazzo; but all this carpeting and cushioning, the softness, the warmth, the clothed and comfortable look, bewildered her. She could scarcely find her way through the drawing-room, crowded with costly furniture, to the blazing fire, by the side of which stood the tea-table, like, and yet how unlike, that anxious copy of English ways which Frances had set up in the loggia. She was conscious, with a momentary gleam of complacency, that her cups and saucers were better, though! not belonging to an ordinary modern set, like these; but, alas, in everything else how far short! Then she was taken up-stairs, through—as she thought—the sumptuous arrangements of her mother’s room, to another smaller, which opened from it, and in which there was the same wealth of carpets, curtains, easy-chairs, and writing-tables, in addition to the necessary details of a sleeping-room. Frances looked round it admiringly. She knew nothing about the modern-artistic, though something, a very little, about old art. The painted ceilings and old gilding of the Palazzo—which she began secretly and obstinately to call home from this moment forth—were intelligible to her; but she was quite unacquainted with Mr Morris’s papers and the art fabrics from Liberty’s. She looked at them with admiration, but doubt. She thought the walls “killed” the pictures that were hung round, which were not like her own little gallery at home, which she had left with a little pang to her sister. “Is this Constance’s room?” she asked timidly, called back to a recollection of Constance, and wondering whether the transfer was to be complete.
“No, my love; it is Frances’ room,” said Lady Markham. “It has always been ready for you. I expected you to come some time. I have always hoped that; but I never thought that Con would desert me.” Her voice faltered a little, which instantly touched Frances’ heart.
“I asked,” she said, “not just out of curiosity, but because, when she came to us, I gave her my room. Our rooms are not like these; they have very few things in them. There are no carpets; it is warmer there, you know; but I thought she would find the blue room so bare, I gave her mine.”
Lady Markham smiled upon her, and said, but with a faint, the very faintest indication of being less interested than Frances was, “You have not many visitors, I suppose?”
“Oh, none!” cried Frances. “I suppose we are—rather poor. We are not—like this.”
“My darling, you don’t know how to speak to me, your own mother! What do you mean, dear, by we? You must learn to mean something else by we. Your father, if he had chosen, might have had—all that you see, and more. And Constance—— But we will say nothing more to-night on that subject. This is Con’s room, see, on the other side of mine. It was always my fancy, my hope, some time to have my two girls, one on each side.”
Frances followed her mother to the room on the other side with great interest. It was still more luxurious than the one appropriated to herself—more comfortable, as a room which has been occupied, which shows traces of its tenant’s tastes and likings, must naturally be; and it was brighter, occupying the front of the house, while that of Frances’ looked to the side. She glanced round at all the fittings and decorations, which, to her unaccustomed eyes, were so splendid. “Poor Constance!” she said under her breath.
“Why do you say poor Constance?” said Lady Markham, with something sharp and sudden in her tone. And then she, too, said regretfully, “Poor Con! You think it will be disappointing to her, this other life which she has chosen. Was it—dreary for you, my poor child?”
Then there rose up in the tranquil mind of Frances a kind of tempest-blast of opposition and resentment. “It is the only life I know—it was—everything I liked best,” she cried. The first part of the sentence was very firmly, almost aggressively said. In the second, she wavered, hesitated, changed the tense—it was. She did not quite know herself what the change meant.