Lilias, for her part, was half-disposed to cry after her demonstration of pride and high spirits. As Jean helped to undress her, which she loved to do when she had the chance, the girl changed her tone.
"What is the use of all my pretty things, if we go nowhere?" she said. "Oh, I should like one ball, just to say I have been at a real ball in London. It would be dreadful to go back again, and, when Katie comes asking how many dances we were at, to say not one. Oh!" cried Lilias, clasping her hands, "I will tell fibs, I know I will, for it would be terrible to confess that."
"My darling!" cried Miss Jean. "Oh, I wish there was any way to get you asked to this grand one that all yon people were talking about. I am sure I would give a little finger if that would do any good."
"But your little finger would do no good," said Lilias, ruefully. "I see now that you never asked that fairy to my christening, as you ought to have done: and she has never forgiven it. But never mind, I must just tell Katie a good big one, for I will not have her pitying me. If it is a little bigger than a fib, it will only be a lee, and that is not so dreadful, after all."
"You must not tell even a fib, my darling—it is never right."
"No, it is never right," said Lilias, with a comical look, kissing her sister, who was now busy, smoothing out and folding the creamy, foamy white draperies in which Lilias had stood about the countess's rooms, not unremarked, though unfriended. What was the use of all these pretty things if they went nowhere? Miss Jean's thoughts were busy with the same problem that occupied her elder sister. It was too impossible to be considered a hope; but if she herself—she who was always the second and far inferior in every way to Margaret—if only she could find some way!
Thus those wonderful prognostications of glory and success with which Miss Margaret had persuaded Lilias to give up the little dissipations of the country, and in which she herself had entertained a faith so calm and assured, came to nothing. Lilias, though in Margaret's presence she took it so nobly, had a great many thoughts upon the subject after she had smiled sleepily and received Miss Jean's good night as if from the very borders of sleep. When Jean went out of the room on tiptoe, Lilias woke up and began to think. She looked down from those heights of experience on which she at present stood, upon herself in the happy vale of her ignorance in Murkley, with a little envy, yet a great deal of contempt. What a little silly thing she had been, expecting to go to Court in the way people write of in books, and to be one of the fine company about the Queen! Lilias reflected with amazement, and even with an amusement which was more droll than pleasant, that had it been suggested to her that she would certainly be invited to Windsor Castle, she would have accepted the incident as quite probable. Margaret had even spoken of the post of maid-of-honour. Lilias laughed a small laugh to herself in the dusk. She had believed it all, it had seemed to her quite natural; but never—never could she be such a simpleton again. One may be silly once, but when enlightenment of this sort comes, she said to herself, it is for ever!—never—never could she be deceived again. And then gulping down something in her throat, and drying her eyes hurriedly under cover of the dark, she declared to herself that it was far better to know, and that even the pain of it was better than the credulous foolishness with which she had taken everything in. In any case it was best to know. If Margaret had made such a mistake, it was not much wonder that she, Lilias, should have been deceived. Lilias recalled Lady Ida's look over her shoulder, the warmth of her greeting to the people who had got the tickets, who were in the world, and felt once more a sensation of hot resentment and indignation darting over her. And yet, perhaps, even that was not so bad as it seemed. When Katie Seton was taken by her mother to the county balls, the great ladies, even Margaret herself, would not encourage the intrusion. To be sure, Katie could not be left standing unnoticed, for she knew everybody just as well as Lady Ida did. But London was very different, London was the world, and it was evident that it was not Lilias' sphere. She saw all the foolishness of the idea as she lay thinking, throwing off the coverings and back the curtains to get as much air as possible in the little, close, London room. She said to herself: Oh! for Murkley, where there was always air enough and to spare, and wide, peaceful horizons, and unfathomable skies, and people who had known her from her cradle. That was far better than standing smiling at nothing, and trying to look as if she liked it, among hordes and hordes of unknown people who stared but never took any trouble to be kind to the strangers. "If I were them," cried Lilias, regardless of possibilities, "and saw strangers standing that knew nobody, it would be there I would go! I would not just stare and think it was not my business. I would make it my business!" She remembered so many ladies who looked as if they must be nice, and girls like herself surrounded with acquaintances and admirers. "Oh!" Lilias cried to herself, her eyes flashing in the dark, "if it had been me!" She would not have let another girl stand forlorn while she was enjoying herself. And Margaret and Jean, whom everybody could see were so far above the common! Perhaps it was because they were English—she said to herself, almost with a pleasant flash of enlightenment—that they were so little kind. But, then, the countess was not English. It was London that made them heartless, that made them think of no one but themselves: at home it could not be so. Then Lilias assured herself once more with lofty philosophy that, though it might not be very pleasant, it was well to have found out at once, so that there might be no further question about it, what a stranger had to expect in the world. No such thing could ever happen at home. The thing for herself and her sisters to do was to turn their backs upon this heartless society, indignant, dignified, valuing it as it deserved, and return to their native scenes, where everybody honoured them, where they were courted when they appeared, and regretted when they went away. The worst wish that Lilias could form was that some of these same young ladies whose looks she could remember anywhere, she thought, should appear in the country, knowing nobody: and then what a gracious revenge the Murrays would take! Margaret would not even wait for an introduction, she would let nobody stand there forlorn in the crowd, and Lilias herself, proudly magnanimous, would prefer them to all the little attentions which on Tayside could never fail. This thought gave a warmer desire to the longing of her disappointment to get home.
But, as she was going to sleep, lulled by this anticipation, two regrets sprang up within her mind, retarding for at least five minutes each her slumbers—one was the thought what a pity to have so many pretty things and never to go anywhere where they could be worn; the other was a keen, acute, stinging realization of Katie, and the many questions that little woman of the world would ask her. "How many balls were you at?" Lilias almost skipped out of bed in her impatience. "But I will not own to it. I will tell her a fib rather. I will almost tell her a lee," Lilias cried to herself. A lee was perhaps worse than a fib; but it was not supposed to be so harsh a thing as a lie—at least upon Tayside.