Too late the poor little stranger realized that even such truisms and commonplaces of conversation as the relations of climbing millionaires and smart women for their mutual weal had no place in the wretchedly limited conversational répertoire of the well-brought-up young girl. It was a very flat and flagging conversation that replaced her lucid word-paintings, for which she, too late, felt that the Dower House schoolroom was not the place, and with a very unfeigned relief she received the message sent up by Mr. Tancred, a message of inquiry as to her readiness to depart.
Readiness to depart! There could be little doubt as to that! The state of mind expressed in that hackneyed line, “Ready to go, but not afraid to stay,” had certainly no reference to her; she was horribly afraid to stay.
Miss Barnacre shook hands with her with brusque manliness, and uttered a condescending and rather dry query, which did not seem eager for an affirmative answer, as to her making a long stay in the neighbourhood.
Miss Aylmer politely accompanied her downstairs. The party they had left in the hall was diminished by two. Flora Tennington and her attendant swain were gone. Perhaps, after all, it would have been the lesser of two evils, though at the time for decision it seemed much the greater, to have abode below; at least, there would have been no danger of corrupting Flora’s mind, and, judging by the undiminished kindliness with which the hostess bade her good night, and the heartiness with which she invited her to repeat her visit, Lady Tennington must have judiciously suppressed all that was damaging—and, when you came to think of it, how little there was that, according to these people’s standard, was not damaging—in Miss Ransome’s past. Flora was always a “good old sort.”
While Bonnybell was accepting with dove-like coos of gratitude the hospitable offer made her, Mr. Tancred was having a word apart with the daughter of the house. Their taste for each other’s society had been long so patent in its perfect and harmless openness, that their acquaintance had grown tired of giving them to each other en secondes noces. He was now testing her friendship, and trying delicately and tactfully, but still with a bias which was quite apparent to her, to extract some favourable judgment upon his new protégée from this tried comrade. As a rule, their opinions coincided with curious nicety; and in the girl’s family circle it had become a proverbial phrase that what Edward Tancred said Catherine would always swear to. The nearest thing to a compliment that she produced was the ejaculation, “She is amazing!” If the adjective was used in a flattering sense, it was too big for the occasion, and if it was not?
“Amazing?” he repeated, conveying a question with the repetition of the word, adding, as no explanation seemed forthcoming, “Amazingly pretty, do you mean?”
“She is that too, of course,” replied his friend, without excessive haste to make the admission, yet, in accordance with her character, making it conscientiously all the same. “But that was not the sense in which I meant to apply it.”
He knew that it would be wiser not to press her further; that after such an exordium no good for Bonnybell could come out of this Galilee, yet he heard himself say—
“How, then?”
“I am not good at defining, and besides, I think that before long you will find out for yourself,” she answered, her smooth, fair face, which, as all her acquaintance said, ought to be better looking than it was, assuming an expression than which her ally thought he had never seen any that became it less. Was it the case, as Toby always told her, that Catherine had a slight cast in her left eye?