It proved when he did so that John had to escort both ladies to the carriage, which it was not very easy to find, no other cavalier being at hand for the moment; and that Lady Mariamne invited him to accompany them to their next stage. "You know the Durfords, of course. You are going there? What luck for us, Nell! Jump in, Mr. Tatham, we will take you on."
"Unfortunately Lady Durford has not taken the trouble to invite me," said John.
"What does that matter? Jump in, all the same, she'll be delighted to see you, and as for not asking you, when you are with me and Nell——"
But John turned a deaf ear to this siren's song.
He went to Curzon Street a little while after to call, as he had been invited to do, and went late to avoid the bustle of the tea-table, and the usual rabble of that no longer intimate but wildly gregarious house. And he was not without his reward. Perhaps a habit he had lately formed of passing by Curzon Street in the late afternoon, when he was on his way to his club, after work was over, had something to do with his choice of this hour. He found Elinor, as he had hoped, alone. She was sitting so close to the window that her white dress mingled with the white curtains, so that he did not at first perceive her, and so much abstracted in her own thoughts that she did not pay any attention to the servant's hurried murmur of his name at the door. When she felt rather than saw that there was some one in the room, Elinor jumped up with a shock of alarm that seemed unnecessary in her own drawing-room; then seeing who it was, was so much and so suddenly moved that she shed a few tears in some sudden revulsion of feeling as she said, "Oh, it is you, John!"
"Yes," he said, "but I am very sorry to see you so nervous."
"Oh, it's nothing. I was always nervous"—which indeed was the purest invention, for Elinor Dennistoun had not known what nerves meant. "I mean I was always startled by any sudden entrance—in this way," she cried, and very gravely asked him to be seated, with a curious assumption of dignity. Her demeanour altogether was incomprehensible to John.
"I hope," he said, "you were not displeased with me, Elinor, for going off the other night. I should have been too happy, you know, to go with you anywhere; but Lady Mariamne is more than I can stand."
"I was very glad you did not come," she said with a sigh; then smiling faintly, "But you were ungrateful, for Mariamne formed a most favourable opinion of you. She said, 'Why didn't you tell me, Nell, you had a cousin so presentable as that?'"
"I am deeply obliged, Elinor; but it seems that what was a compliment to me personally involved something the reverse for your other relations."