“Oh yes,” cried Frances, with a burst of tender compunction, taking her mother’s soft white dimpled hand in her own, and kissing it with a fervour which meant penitence as well as enthusiasm. “It is so good of you to remind me of that.”
“Because she has not much good to say of me? My dear, there are a great many things that you don’t know, that it would be hard to explain to you: we must forgive her for that.”
And for a moment Lady Markham looked very grave, turning her face away towards the vacancy of the dark room with something that sounded like a sigh. Her daughter had never loved her so much as at this moment. She laid her cheek upon her mother’s hand, and felt the full sweetness of that contact enter into her heart.
“But I am disturbing your beauty-sleep, my love,” she said; “and I want you to look your best to-morrow; there are several people coming to-morrow. Did she give you that great cloak, Frances? How like poor Caroline! I know the cloak quite well. It is far too old for you. But that is beautiful sable it is trimmed with; it will make you something. She is fond of giving presents.” Lady Markham was very quick—full of the intelligence in which Mrs Clarendon failed. She felt the instinctive loosening of her child’s hands from her own, and that the girl’s cheek was lifted from that tender pillow. “But,” she said, “we’ll say no more of that to-night,” and stooped and kissed her, and drew her covering about her with all the sweetness of that care which Frances had never received before. Nevertheless, the involuntary and horrible feeling that it was clever of her mother to stop when she did and say no more, struck chill to the girl’s very soul.
Next day Mr Ramsay came in the afternoon, and immediately addressed himself to Frances. “I hope you have not forgotten your promise, Miss Waring, to give me all the renseignements. I should not like to lose such a good chance.”
“I don’t think I have any information to give you—if it is about Bordighera, you mean. I am fond of it; but then I have lived there all my life. Constance thought it dull.”
“Ah yes, to be sure—your sister went there. But her health was perfect. I have seen her go out in the wildest weather, in days that made me shiver. She said that to see the sun always shining bored her. She liked a great deal of excitement and variety—don’t you think?” he added after a moment, in a tentative way.
“The sun does not shine always,” said Frances, piqued for the reputation of her home, as if this were an accusation. “We have grey days sometimes, and sometimes storms, beautiful storms, when the sea is all in foam.”
He shivered a little at the idea. “I have never yet found the perfect place in which there is nothing of all that,” he said. “Wherever I have been, there are cold days—even in Algiers, you know. No climate is perfect. I don’t go in much for society when I am at a health-place. It disturbs one’s thoughts and one’s temper, and keeps you from fixing your mind upon your cure, which you should always do. But I suppose you know everybody there?”
“There is—scarcely any one there,” she said, faltering, remembering at once that her father was not a person to whom to offer introductions.