Miss Bonnybell listened with the restrained admiration for such lofty disinterestedness which she felt was expected of her, and put in at the end—
“You must remember how much more good you will be able to do. How often you used to regret that your means were rather limited!”
“Yes, if one keeps one’s mind on that aspect of the affair—indeed, I do not attempt to deny”—relapsing into nature and complacency—“that there are things about it that I like.”
There was a short silence, Miss Ransome in fond fancy scattering old Tom’s new millions with a liberal hand, and Felicity—— The trend of the latter’s thought appeared presently in a sentence tinged with a natural regret that had no pose in it.
“The only sad thing about it is that we have no one to come after us!”
“Have you tried Schwalbach?” asked Bonnybell, with heartfelt sympathy, and not for the moment recollecting that she was making her first lapse from jeune fille-ism; “and have you heard of the new doctor in Paris? Lady —— swears by him. She must be quite as old as you, and had been married twenty years, without chick or child; but now——”
Lady Bletchley reddened. “It is not a subject I can discuss with you,” she said, dryly; but, mollified presently by the snubbed deprecation of the little innocent face opposite her, added, with an embarrassed laugh, “I see that Camilla has not, as I had hoped, succeeded in curing you of that deplorable habit of yours.”
Although feverishly eager to regain the ground lost by her slip, Miss Ransome could not help a very small smile, evoked by some pungent memory, yet it was with a mournful accent of remorse at the insuccess of the recorded admonishments that she said—
“Mrs. Tancred often corrected me; and I did try to improve, but I suppose it is because I feel so happy and at home here that I say just what comes uppermost.”
A little kiss, falling light as thistle-down upon the well-cared-for hand nearest her, and accepted in quite a different spirit from that which had shaken off those attempted to be executed upon Camilla’s bony knuckles, achieved the sinner’s forgiveness. It was in a comfortable tone of intimacy and prospective enjoyment that Felicity began her catechism as to Miss Ransome’s rural experiences, a catechism which the latter had foreseen, and, as far as possible, provided for, or rather against.