Frances had been so singled out for the purpose of giving the young invalid information, that she found herself a little apart from the party when he went away. They were all ladies, and all intimates, and the unaccustomed girl was not prepared for the onslaught of this curious and eager, though so pretty and fashionable mob. “What are those renseignements you have been giving him? Is he going off after Con? Has he been questioning you about Con? We are all dying to know. And what do you think she will say to him if he goes out after her?” cried all, speaking together, those soft eager voices, to which Frances did not know how to reply.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Frances became accustomed to the presence of young Ramsay after this. He appeared almost every day, very often in the afternoon, eager for tea, and always disposed to inquire for further renseignements, though he was quite certain that he was not to leave England till autumn at the earliest. She began to regard him as a younger brother, or cousin at the least—a perfectly harmless individual, with whom she could talk when he wanted her with a gentle complacence, without any reference to her own pleasure. As a matter of fact, it did not give her any pleasure to talk to Claude. She was kind to him for his sake; but she had no desire for his presence on her own account. It surprised her that he ever could have been thought of as a possible mate for Constance. Constance was so much cleverer, so much more advanced in every way than herself, that to suppose she could put up with what Frances found so little attractive, was a constant amazement to the girl. She could not but express this on one of the occasions, not so very frequent as she had expected, on which her mother and she were alone together.
“Is it really true,” she said at the end of a long silence, “that there was a question of a—marriage between Constance and Mr Ramsay?”
“It is really quite true,” said her mother with a smile. “And why not? Do you disapprove?”
“It is not that I disapprove—I have no right to disapprove; it is only that it seems so impossible.”
“Why? I see nothing impossible in it. He is of suitable age; he is handsome. You cannot deny that he is handsome, however much you may dislike him, my dear.”
“But I don’t dislike him at all; I like him very much—in a kind of way.”
“You have every appearance of doing so,” said Lady Markham with meaning. “You talk to him more, I think, than to any one else.”
“That is because——”