“There must be some mistake. Mrs. Aylmer knows that I am never at home in the morning.”
“Mrs. Aylmer told me to say that she wished to apologize for disturbing you, but that, as it is something very urgent, she thought you would not mind breaking through your rule for once in a way.”
Without any further remonstrance or inquiry, and no change of countenance to indicate the surprise that her friend’s audacity bred in her, Mrs. Tancred obeyed the summons to the morning-room. There she found the Aylmers, mother and eldest daughter, standing close together, and somehow giving the impression of doing it for mutual protection, near the fireplace.
“What can it be that will not keep till the afternoon?” she asked, rather severely, but holding out a hand to each in a manner that implied intimacy and goodwill.
She looked from one to the other as she put her rebuking question, and it would need a much less penetrating vision than hers to perceive that both were, in servant phrase, “very much upset.”
“I am going to London in the afternoon,” replied Mrs. Aylmer, “as I sent word by Edward last evening, but even if I was not I do not think I could have borne to put it off—to delay getting it off my mind.”
“To put what off? To getting what off your mind? Will you please come to the point?”
There was a very perceptible stiffening in Camilla’s manner; anything of the evasive or shilly-shallying being abhorrent to her. Her friend was well aware of this peculiarity, and was very much frightened by having provoked it, but she was also too much frightened at the task she had in hand to state even now directly her errand.
“It is the first—the very first touch of anything disagreeable that has ever come into our relations with each other.”
“Had not we better sit down?” rejoined Camilla, with an elaborate patience. “There is no use in tiring ourselves by standing until we get to the point.”