Curiously enough it was the governess alone—as if she had any say in the matter!—who objected to the idea. Of course she did not object in words—but she nearly wrecked the project notwithstanding. She said, very innocently, that she did not think—even though Mrs. Harwood was so good as to ask her—that she could be present. There was a great outcry over this, for it was at luncheon, and the whole family was at table.
“Not come to the dance?” said Dolff. “Oh, but, Miss Summerhayes, that will spoil everything. I have—we’ve all calculated upon you, haven’t we, mother. Tell her she must come.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Harwood, “this is quite a new idea. I couldn’t have a dance in the house, knowing there was a young person upstairs alone. Oh, no, I couldn’t do it. Dolff is quite right—you must come.”
Gussy had only said “Oh!” raising her eyelids—but Janet read in that exclamation a suspicion and question. Gussy did not believe that she was sincere, and was curious to know what her motive was. The two had drifted apart strangely, but this suspicion was not native to Miss Harwood’s mind. It came from all those talks about Janet, and Dolff’s subjection to her, which had afforded an opportunity for so much amusement over the piano. Meredith would say, “Ah! I wonder what she means by that?” till Gussy put the question to herself involuntarily as he would have put it, feeling all the same that sick weariness with the subject which translated itself unjustly, but not unnaturally, into an impatience with Janet which sometimes she could hardly restrain.
“I should like to come,” said Janet, “but you forget I am in mourning. It is not six months yet——”
“That is true,” said the old lady; but she added: “My dear, I like you the better for thinking of it. But, after all, she was not a near relation—not like your mother. For an aunt, six months’ mourning is all that any one thinks of nowadays. And I believe the late poor lady was not even an aunt.”
“She was all I ever had, for mother or aunt or guardian.”
“Yes, I know—but left you to struggle for yourself, which makes a little difference. And what harm can it do her, poor thing, that you should enjoy yourself a little? You don’t get so many opportunities in this quiet house. When Dolff goes away we shall all relapse into our needlework again.”
“And Charley Meredith,” said Julia.
Thought is quicker than the most rapid utterance. Julia’s words came instantaneously, almost before her mother had done speaking, but it had flashed into two different minds before she spoke. And Charley Meredith! Gussy added that reflection to the picture of the future with an increasing sickness and impatience of her heart, seeing the same thing over again stretch before her, not without happiness in it, but with a weariness and incompleteness which would grow day by day. And it gleamed into Janet’s thoughts with a certain excitement and suspense, as of a thing of which nobody could prophesy how it would end. The sudden movement in both minds was curiously struck as by a false note by Mrs. Harwood’s calm reply: