“Oh, amuse yourself as much as you like,” murmured Miss Lestrange, holding out her hand in farewell, “but don’t marry him!”
“I guess you’re going to be disappointed,” observed Anastasia, as her companion, reaching the door, turned to look back at her. “I guess you’re going to feel disconnected, too!”
Miss Lestrange didn’t know what her hostess meant, but she had said all she had to say and done all she could do. There was nothing more to act upon, and she knew that she had failed.
Suddenly Miss Lestrange felt old and helpless; something that had always accompanied her--a sense of the inherent dignity and interest of her position--which made her observe the world blandly, as one who has a right to a front seat on a grand-stand--left her. She felt as if she was, after all, only one of the crowd, liable to be pushed and jogged by elbows, even liable to be thrust permanently aside. She stood quite still in the finely upholstered lounge of the big hotel, and a waiter came up and asked her if he could bring her anything.
“Yes,” said Miss Lestrange, sitting down at one of the many little tables scattered about. “You may bring me a cup of tea. Perhaps,” she said to herself, “that was what I wanted. I have missed my tea.”
VIII
Edith hardly turned her head to say “Come in!” to the timid knock at her door. She was sitting at her desk, doing accounts, and puzzled as usual by her immaculate predecessor’s example--an example which, “as the most sensible of women,” she tried hard to follow, but she was frequently overcome by the invincible malice of pounds, shillings, and pence.
The pause, however, that followed arrested her attention, and she turned to meet the eyes of her step-son with a thrill of astonishment. He had never before voluntarily entered her private boudoir, and there was an air about his whole person which betokened the unusual, though he suppressed what he could only consider a weakness as well as he could.
Edith saw in a moment that she must suppress it too. “I’m so glad you have come,” she said; “now you can do this horrid sum for me. I am trying to balance my accounts, and though I can see quite plainly what I’ve spent and what I had to spend, they obstinately refuse to have anything to do with each other.”
Leslie looked over her shoulder; he was pleased to point out her mistake--it was a very obvious one--and it at once put him at his ease. He felt there could be nothing very formidable in a woman who could make such a silly mistake in quite a simple sum.