“The leaves? what a charming garland!” said Lady Curtis. The “rubbish” which Nancy had been amusing herself with, was fixed up against the wall with two pins. Nancy, herself, thought it was rather pretty, but nothing of course to the étude in chalks.
“Oh no, not that! that is all nonsense. It isn’t fit for your ladyship to look at; but look here, my lady,” said Matilda, proudly. Lady Curtis cast a careless glance at the drawing, which the sister thought so superior; then turned with much admiration to the wreath that hung against the wall.
“I must try to coax you,” she said, “after a while, when you know us, to make some designs for me, for my crewels. How beautifully they would work! Look, Lucy!”
“They are very clever,” said Lucy, going up to look; the sisters could not believe their ears; and never, though Nancy had known the sweetness of girlish triumph, and had “had offers” before Arthur, and had tasted the sweetness of a young lover’s adoration—never had gratified pride so touched her heart as at this moment; her face brightened out of its anxious awe and alarm.
“Do you really, really think that? that I could make designs—for you?”
Lady Curtis thought she understood it all; evidently they were poor, and this promised perhaps some occupation that would help their poor little ends to meet. “Indeed I do, really, really,” she said, pleased with the simplicity of the words, “if you will be so very kind and take so much trouble. I will show you what I am working now when you come to see me at the Hall.”
Nancy’s head swam with a soft intoxication of pleasure. These kind looks, these kind words from this dreaded fine lady, who had been her bugbear—whom she hated in imagination, and credited with every evil quality—overwhelmed her. And Lucy’s presence gave a thrill of danger, half-alarming, half-delicious, to this strange ecstasy of feeling. If Lucy should have recognised her! She was saying something, she could scarcely tell what, about nothing she could do being good enough—when Lady Curtis, still looking, smiling, in her face, prostrated her with the innocent question:
“You have met my son—in society—Mrs. Rolt thinks—”
Nancy started from her chair, unable to restrain herself. “Oh—no, no!” she said trembling—not, she was going to say, in society, but changed this by instinct rather than reason, “not—your son; I told her after that it was—a mistake; only some one of the name.”
“Ah!” said Lady Curtis with a little sigh. “I am disappointed. I thought it had been my Arthur. Perhaps then it was one of my nephews, the General’s boys? The Rector is one of them. My son has not been at home for more than two years—it is a long time not to see him. I quite hoped,” she added with flattering friendliness, “that it had been him you knew.”