“How are you, mamma? Frances has run up-stairs; but here am I, just come back,” she said.
Lady Markham rose from her seat with a little scream of astonishment. “Constance! It is not possible. Who would have dreamed of seeing you!” she cried.
“Oh yes, it is quite possible,” said Constance, when they had kissed, with a prolonged encounter of lips and cheeks. “Surely, you did not think I could keep very long away?”
“My darling, did you get home-sick, or mammy-sick as Markham says, after all your philosophy?”
“I am so glad to see you, mamma, and looking so well. No, not home-sick, precisely, dear mother, but penetrated with the folly of staying there, where nothing was ever doing, when I might have been in the centre of everything: which is saying much the same thing, though in different words.”
“In very different words,” said Lady Markham, resuming her seat with a smile. “I see you have not changed at all, Con. Will you have any tea? And did you leave—your home there—with as little ceremony as you left me!”
“May I help myself, mamma? don’t you trouble. It is very nice to see your pretty china, instead of Frances’ old bizarre cups, which were much too good for me. Oh, I did not leave my—home. I—brought it back with me.”
“You brought——?”
“My father with me, mamma.”
“Oh!” Lady Markham said. She was too much astonished to say more.