She felt guilty; she did not know why. There was no harm in it. She might have said it was out of an old copybook; but somehow she did not—scared by she knew not what.
Mrs. Harwood had been wheeled, to that end of the room to see the programmes, and to examine some new arrangements Gussy had been making for the ball. She dropped out of her hand the pretty pink programme which she had been holding, and called to her son to take her back to her place, with a change of mien which brought a chill over the party. Janet felt more and more guilty, though she did not know what she had done, nor why she could not confess frankly where she had got her information. The others soon recovered the momentary depression, and resumed their talk over the approaching event, but Janet stood at the piano, running over the notes of a waltz softly with one hand, and wondering why she should have produced, without intending it, so great an effect. Presently Mrs. Harwood called her, clapping her hands as she had a way of doing to secure attention. Janet hurried to her side. The old lady had recovered her composure, but she still looked grave.
“My dear,” she said, “you will wonder that I was so startled. There was no reason. Of course you could know nothing. That was my husband’s name.”
“Oh, Mrs. Harwood, I am so sorry. I can’t think what made me ask. It was because most people, I suppose, have more names than one: and Charles was the first that came into my head.”
It will be seen that Janet told a little fib again, but she said it in a hurry, and did not mean it, or at least this was how she afterwards explained it to herself.
“Then it was only what people call a curious coincidence,” said Mrs. Harwood, with a smile.
CHAPTER XXV.
The night of the ball arrived at last. It was a long time in coming to the impatience of Dolff and Julia: and even to Gussy, who was not impatient, who would rather have held it off a little when the day at last came, and to whom so many things were involved in the hours which would be but amusement to the rest. Nobody suspected what was going on under Gussy’s tranquil looks. She was one of those people whom many think to be incapable of feeling at all. She had a force of resolution not to expose herself, not to let anybody know what she endured, which was equal to almost any trial. There are many women who possess this power, but it is most frequently exercised to shield and cover the delinquencies of others. Gussy’s reticence was only for herself; but strength of any kind is respectable; and if any one had known the fever that was in her breast, the chance upon which the fortune of her life seemed to turn, and the absolute tranquillity with which, to all appearance, she prepared for the evening’s pleasure, no doubt she would have earned the admiration of some and the respect of others.
But our best qualities, as well as our worst, remain for the most part blank to those who surround us, and nobody suspected either the trouble in which Miss Harwood was, or the empire she exercised over her own soul. Janet, perhaps, was the only member of the party who was in the least degree cognizant of it, but even Janet was chiefly aware, with a feeling of provoked sympathy, that Gussy, as she generally did, had dressed herself unbecomingly on an occasion on which the little, quick-witted governess divined she would have wished to look her best. Gussy was not clever in the matter of dress. She arrayed herself in the lightest of tints and materials—she who was herself so colorless, who wanted something solid and distinct “to throw her up.”
Janet had done her duty in this respect by the other young woman, who could scarcely now be called her friend, so conscious were both of a mist that had come between them. It was one of Janet’s good qualities that she had no jealous feeling, but that unfeigned pleasure in dress which made her so anxious to see everybody else becomingly attired, that she was impatient of failure. She had given many hints and suggestions as to Miss Harwood’s dress on this particular occasion, but they had not been attended to. And Gussy had enveloped herself in something that was not quite white nor yet any other color, with the persistency common to persons who are without any real instinct in the matter; and, instead of looking her best, looked more colorless than usual.