"I did not know that you knew him so well, Nora."
"Oh yes—when you have a man thrust upon you as he has been—when you have always heard of him all your life; when people have said for years,—in fun, you know, of course, but still they have said it—'Wait till you see John Erskine!'"
Nora's tone was slightly aggrieved. She could not help feeling herself a little injured that, after so much preparation and so many indications of fate, John Erskine should turn out to be nothing to her after all.
Lady Caroline listened with an eager countenance. Before Nora had done speaking, she turned upon her, taking both her hands. Her soft grey eyes widened out with anxious questions. The corners of her mouth drooped. "Nora, dear child, dear child!" she said, "you cannot mean—you do not say——"
"Oh, I don't say anything at all," cried Nora, half angry, half amused, with a laugh at herself which was about a quarter part inclined to crying. "No, of course not, Car. How could I care for him—a man I had never seen? But just—it seems so ludicrous, after this going on all one's life, that it should come to nothing in a moment. I never can help laughing when I think of it. 'Oh, wait till you see John Erskine!' Since I was fifteen everybody has said that. And then when he did appear at last, oh,—I thought him very nice—I had no objection to him—I was not a bit unwilling,—to see him calmly turn his back upon me, as he did to-day at the station!"
Nora laughed till the tears came into her eyes; but Lady Caroline, whose seriousness precluded any admixture of humour in the situation, took the younger girl in her arms and kissed her, with a pitying tenderness and enthusiasm of consolation. "My little Nora! my little Nora!" she said. She was too much moved with the most genuine emotion and sympathy to say more; at which Nora, half accepting the crisis, half struggling against it, laughed again and again till the tears rolled over her cheeks.
"Lady Car! Lady Car! it is not for sorrow; it is the fun of it—the fun of it!" she cried.
But Carry did not see the fun. She wanted to soothe the sorrow away.
"Dearest Nora, this sort of disappointment is only visionary," she said. "It is your imagination that is concerned, not your heart. Oh, believe me, dear, you will laugh at it afterwards; you will think it nothing at all. How little he knows! I shall think less of his good sense, less of his discrimination, than I was disposed to do. To think of a man so left to himself as to throw my Nora away!"
"He has not thrown me away," cried Nora, with a little pride; "because, thank heaven, he never knew that he had me in his power! But you must think more, not less, of his discrimination, Carry; for if he never had any eyes for me, it was for the excellent good reason that he had seen Edith before. So my pride is saved—quite saved," the girl cried.