Her answer must be cautious, yet not hesitating. To repudiate intimacy with Flora would be—shabby?—yes, but that might pass at a pinch, but it would also be useless.
“She was very kind to me when I was a child,” answered the dear little voice, with a deprecating gratitude in its tones; “and she was at school with my grandmother.”
“With your grandmother!” repeated Miss Aylmer, in a key of rather gratified discovery. “Oh, then she must be much older than——” The speaker broke off; but it was not difficult for the hearer to supply the missing “than she pretends.”
“My grandmother would not be so very old if she were alive,” replied Bonnybell; “Claire was only thirty-four when she died.”
The name slipped out headlong, all Miss Ransome’s wariness being unfortunately on duty in another direction. Every one looked puzzled, not having the slightest idea as to who “Claire” was, nor how her early death affected the age of the young stranger’s grandmother.
“Lady Tennington is very bien conservée, isn’t she?” continued the girl, hurrying away from the too-late-realized blunder; “and though she looks a good deal made up, it is really more face massage than anything else. We—I know her masseuse! We often employed her. She was the best in Paris.”
There was a slight silence, as of a company taken aback. Every eye involuntarily rested on Bonnybell’s lovely bloom, each looker asking himself or herself distrustfully whether it and the exquisite seventeen-year-old contour were due to mysterious French rubbings and unguents?
“She has not been very long in the neighbourhood; we know her only very slightly,” said the elder Miss Aylmer, presently, with an air of reserve, and the subject was felt to be closed. The never-to-be-defeated governess at once replaced it by another.
“You walked here?”
“Yes.”