“Yes.” Another vivid flush covered Nancy’s face; she grew prettier and prettier as she grew thus animated, wavering from one emotion to another. This time it seemed all pleasure, warming her all over, and making her countenance glow.
“He has done nothing but rave about you ever since. I shall be jealous if you don’t mind. Will you come to-morrow?”
“Not to-morrow,” said Nancy, her face changing like a sunset sky. “Oh, Lady Curtis, you are too good to me. You don’t know me—”
“No, not much; but everything must have a beginning,” said the gracious lady. “We must settle upon a day. If not to-morrow, let it be Saturday. That will give you four days to make up your mind. You must come up early to luncheon, and Lucy and I will show you all there is to see. If you meet Lucy, will you tell her I am going slowly up the avenue waiting for her. She should be on her way home now.”
Nancy went away with her head full of excitement, and a hundred conflicting thoughts. She met Lucy at the corner of the village street, who looked at her with investigating eyes. Whom has she been talking to, to make her look so bright, yet so agitated? Lucy asked herself. Surely it could not be Bertie, who had passed but a little time before? The jealousy of a tiger suddenly sprang up in Lucy’s mind. If this girl came here to conciliate the family, yet under their very eyes looked like this, because of the admiration of another man!
“Miss Curtis, I have just met——” (Nancy did not like to say “your mother,” that seemed too familiar; and her ladyship, as Matilda said, was too like a servant) “Lady Curtis. She said I was to tell you that she was in the avenue waiting for you. She is very kind,” said Nancy, with a little appealing look. “She said I was to come to the Hall. Does she really mean me to come, Miss Curtis? You will tell me true.”
“Do you think my mother says what she does not mean?” cried Lucy, herself half-touched, half-angry; for she felt now that she did not want to like this girl, whose secret she alone knew—and yet there was danger that she might be made to like her. The creature looked beautiful, something had inspired her. She had never looked so nearly beautiful before. “Of course she means you to come, what else could you suppose?”
“I did not know that—people were so kind,” said Nancy, in a very low tone. Then she looked at Lucy, half-wistful, half-suspicious. Lucy was not like the rest, there was a mixture of feelings in her which did not exist in the others, a complication of sentiment which Nancy divined, though she could not have told how. “I will come if you say so,” she said.
“Then come,” said Lucy, holding out her hand, with a sudden movement. “And good-bye. I must run, if my mother is waiting for me—” She hurried away for other reasons, too. It seemed to her as if she must say something, disclose her knowledge, encourage Nancy to win the favour of her father and mother if she lingered a moment longer. “Is it because she is so pretty?” Lucy asked herself; “if I were a gentleman perhaps!” As a matter-of-fact, women are absurdly subject to this spell of beauty; but we have been taught to think that it is not so, and most people believe as they are taught; so Lucy supposed it must have been something else which moved her, and suddenly made her forget her prejudices. She hurried on after her mother, who was still lingering in the avenue. It was early afternoon still, but the short winter day was already waning.
“You are late,” Lady Curtis said, when she came up. “I thought, as it gets dark so soon, I would come and meet you.” This was one of the many little pathetic additions to her ordinary tender ways, which Lady Curtis made, partially unawares, to conciliate her child.