‘So Mrs. Vice-Consul allows one to suppose,’ said Lady Barker. ‘But she is so pretty—prettier than anything I have seen for ages; and Ombra, too, is pretty, the late Vice-Consul’s heiress. They will far furore—two such new faces, and both so English; so fresh; so gauche!’
This was Lady Barker’s way of backing her friends; but the friends did not know of it, and it procured them their invitation all the same, and Lady Granton’s card to put on the top of the few other cards which callers had left. And Mrs. Anderson came to be, without knowing it, the favourite joke of the ambassadorial circle. Mrs. Vice-Consul had more wonderful sayings fastened upon her than she ever dreamt of, and became the type and symbol of the heavy British matron to that lively party. Her friend made her out to be a bland and dignified mixture of Mrs. Malaprop and Mrs. Nickleby. Meanwhile, she had a great many things to do, which occupied her, and drove even her anxieties out of her mind. There was the settling down—the hiring of servants and additional furniture, and all the trifles necessary to make their rooms ‘comfortable;’ and then the dresses of the girls to be put in order, and especially the dress in which Kate was to make her first appearance.
Mrs. Anderson had accepted Mr. Courtenay’s conditions; she had acquiesced in the propriety of keeping silent as to Kate’s pretensions, and guarding her from all approach of fortune-hunters. There was even something in this which was not disagreeable to her maternal feelings; for to have Kate made first, and Ombra second, would not have been pleasant. But still, at the same time, she could not restrain a natural inclination to enhance the importance of her party by a hint—an inference. That little intimation about Kate’s coming of age, she had meant to tell, as indeed it did, more than she intended; and now her mind was greatly exercised about her niece’s ball-dress. ‘White tarlatane is, of course, very nice for a young girl,’ she said, doubtfully, ‘it is all my Ombra has ever had; but, for Kate, with her pretensions——’
This was said rather as one talks to one’s self, thinking aloud, than as actually asking advice.
‘But I thought Kate in Florence was to be simply your niece,’ said Ombra, who was in the room. ‘To make her very fine would be bad taste; besides,’ she added, with a little sigh, ‘Kate would look well in white calico. Nature has decked her so. I suppose I never, at my best, was anything like that.’
Ombra had improved very much since their arrival in Florence. Her fretfulness had much abated, and there was no envy in this sigh.
‘At your best, Ombra! My foolish darling, do you think your best is over?’ said the mother, with a smile.
‘I mean the bloom,’ said Ombra. ‘I never had any bloom—and Kate’s is wonderful. I think she gives a pearly, rosy tint to the very air. I was always a little shadow, you know!’
‘You will not do yourself justice,’ cried Mrs. Anderson. ‘Oh! Ombra, if you only knew how it grieves me! You draw back, and you droop into that dreamy, melancholy way; there is always a mist about you. My darling, this is a new place, you will meet new people, everything is fresh and strange. Could you not make a new beginning, dear, and shake it off!’
‘I try,’ said Ombra, in a low tone.