“And leave you to cope alone with all that mass of work you told me of last night? Do I look very pasty? I dare say; I did not sleep very well; I suppose because I was too excited at being back again with you.”
This charming explanation was accepted as probable, and Miss Ransome’s conscience eased by receiving the assurance that she could be equally useful to her patroness doing commissions out-of-doors; that patroness’s lady’s-maid being apparently only inferior to her secretary, Miss Sloggett, in block-like stupidity.
An hour later, therefore, Bonnybell found herself walking down Bond Street, chaperoned by the functionary in question, and entrusted with many nice tasks of matching, pricing, and ordering. Shopping had always been inexpressibly dear to Miss Ransome’s towny heart; and though the choosing of vicarious finery was a very inferior pastime to the testing of colours and shapes upon her own light form and brilliant face; yet it would have been difficult to find an anodyne more effectual than that provided, with no such intention nor the least knowledge that any painkiller was needed, by her protectress.
Bonnybell had set off on her walk in the lowest spirits possible to one of her nature. She had not at all adjusted her mind to a future from which Edward was eliminated. The insecurity of her present status, hinging on the more or less of water in the Scotch river honoured by Tom’s rod; and the dismal possibility of a livelihood dearly bought by conducting a Mrs. Slammer’s servants to those elevating museums and exhibitions in which she herself would never willingly set foot, called forth reflections not calculated to exhilarate.
But true philosophy, that “perpetual feast of nectared sweets,” never leaves its sincere votary long unsupported; and by the time that she had realized what startling surprises in shape and fabric the spring hats revealed, and that half a score of men had twisted their necks to get a longer look at her through the side window of their hansoms, Miss Ransome felt that there was yet balm in Gilead for her broken spirit. A really delightful hour and a half followed, spent in exhilarating intercourse with a couple of very smart dressmakers, during which she committed herself on her own account to two toilettes sérieuses, some trivial costlinesses in the way of “little” matinées, fichus, veils, etc., and three really bewildering toques.
Her purchases made a large hole in Camilla’s handsome tip—that is to say, they would have done if she had paid for them, but, as she piously said to herself, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” adding, less piously, that there was no reason why her future husband should not pay for them.
Reluctantly, and summoned by duty, she at length began to turn her steps homeward, and was loitering a moment before a florist’s—the flowers that grew in shops were the only ones really admired by Bonnybell—and inhaling whiffs from the white lilac boughs and stacks of lilies-of-the-valley inside, when she was startled by a voice calling to her from an electric brougham which had pulled up at the kerbstone.
“Bonnybell! Bonnybell!”
Who could be Bonnybell-ing her here in Piccadilly, whither her maiden feet had now strayed? The answer came all too soon, nor did it take more than one glance at the face of the very pronounced “chemical blonde” thrust out of the automobile’s window to tell Miss Ransome that she was once more face to face with her past and Flora Tennington.
As on a former meeting, the pleasure in the encounter was all on one side.