'Oh Norah!' she said, 'I did not know you were coming. Good morning, Mrs Drummond. Mr Rivers, I thought you were altogether lost. You disappeared the moment we set you down. I suppose you had something more agreeable in hand.'
'I had nothing in hand, Miss Burton, except like everybody else—to amuse myself, I suppose.'
'And you have found a charming way of doing that, I am sure,' said poor jealous, foolish Clara; her face was flushed, her voice slightly elevated. She could not bear it; if it had been one of the Ladies Merewether, or even one of the Daltons from the Rectory—but Norah! It was more than she could put up with. Mrs Drummond, who was decorous, the very soul of good order and propriety, rose up instinctively to cover this little outbreak. 'Let us walk about a little,' she said. Let us hide this unwomanly self-betrayal, was what she meant.
Norah, too, was wounded and ashamed, though without feeling herself involved. Clara was 'in a temper,' Norah thought. They all knew that Clara in a temper was to be avoided. She was sorry Mr Rivers should see it. 'Oh Clara! isn't it strange to be here with everything so different,' she said. 'Don't you remember our pranks on the grass when we were children? and your pony which we all envied so much? How odd it is in some ways to be grown up!'
Clara took no notice of this conciliatory speech, but Mr Rivers did. 'I hope it is not less pleasant,' he said.
'I don't know—we walk about now, instead of running races and playing games. Do you remember, Clara——'
'I have not time to talk over all that old nonsense,' said Clara. 'The Marchioness is calling me;' and she turned sharply off and joined her mother, who was with that great lady. She was quite pale with anger and dismay. She walked up to Mrs Burton and looked her in the face. It was her doing! and then she drew back a step, and stood behind, doing all she could to make her vexation visible. She wanted to punish her mother. The others had all dispersed into groups; but Clara stood alone, determined to be unhappy. Mrs Burton, however, was not punished at all; her scheme had succeeded. Her daughter's temper could not last above an hour or two; and her son was safe. He was walking about with Lady Florizel, 'paying her,' as Miss Ashurst said, 'every attention,' under her satisfied eyes.
The picnic ran its course like other picnics. It was very delightful to some, and very wretched—a day to date from, as the unhappiest ever known—to others. Cyril Rivers did not, as Mrs Burton had predicted, leave the Drummonds all day. Had he suspected that this was the very result she aimed at, and that Ned's lowering brows and unhappy looks were the very things the party had been given for, the chances are that he would have resisted the temptation which was stealing over him; but he did not know this, and he did not resist. He thought they were laying vulgar visible claim to him, before he had made up his mind one way or another; and this was a thing his pride refused to allow; while at the same time Norah was very sweet. She was a 'rosebud set about with wilful thorns;' she would not agree with him, nor yield in argument; she was not a shadowless beauty all in broad blaze of sunshine and complacency, like Clara; there were clouds and shadows about her, and a veil of soft mystery, spontaneous movements of fancy, wayward digression out of one thing into another. Mrs Drummond, who was the spectator at the banquet, grew alarmed. She tried to separate them, to lead Norah away among the other people. But she was balked in that by every means. The other people were chiefly county people, too grand for the Drummonds, who were civil to the handsome mother and pretty daughter, but not anxious for their further acquaintance. Wherever they turned Mr Rivers met them. He was not cold, nor slow to see when Helen wanted to seat herself, when she wanted to move about. At last, when the afternoon was beginning to wane, and the elder ladies to think of their shawls, some of the younger ones proposed a dance on the green. Mrs Drummond was left sitting by herself, while Norah went to dance with Mr Rivers, and it was then for the first time that Mr Burton came up to her. She could not but suppose that he had been taking too much wine.
'Well, Helen,' he said, in his loud voice, 'this is an unusual sort of scene for you—like it? I don't suppose you know many people, though; but that little girl of yours is going too fast; mind my word, she is going too fast.'
'I think, Mr Burton, you mistake——'