“I look more young and innocent with my hair a little dishevelled,” she said, carefully pulling out a strand and letting it amble down the back of her neck.
Having smeared a drop or two of ink on the middle finger of her right hand to give the idea of past obedience to Camilla’s suggestion of taking notes as she read, Miss Ransome, having wasted only two minutes on her preparations, flew along the endless passages and down the slippery polished stairs in prompt and cheerful obedience. Short as had been the interval between her being sent for and her arrival, it had seemed phenomenal in length to the three people making forced conversation during it—conversation all the harder for being so out of character with their usual easy intimacy.
Bonnybell, on her downward flight, had quickly decided that it would be wisest to come in impulsively, and with no hint of a suspicion that the motive for her production could be other than a pleasant one. She carried her intention out admirably, and the graceful, young cordiality of her greeting to the visitors, with its respectfully grateful stage aside to Mrs. Tancred, “How good of you to let me know!” could not be improved upon. But the first touch of the visitors’ limp hands, the first glance at their overset countenances, told her that her earliest and worst supposition was the true one, and that the object of their coming was not to invite her to gambols with Toby, but to arraign her for some crime against their stupid and unintelligible code. The accusing forms of Waddy and Cressida rose before her, and she said to herself with an inward groan, “What an ass I was to cast my pearls before such swine!”
Meanwhile the “swine” might provoke pity in their worst enemy; and Camilla allowed a moment or two to elapse, perhaps with a touch of malice, perhaps only while gathering herself to strike, before she relieved them from their cruelly false position.
“I do not think you need be so very glad to see Mrs. Aylmer,” she said with a dryness in comparison of which the desert sand was juicy. “She has come upon an errand that is not particularly pleasant for either herself or you.”
The light died out of Miss Ransome’s face; she was careful that it should do so gradually, to keep up the impression of complete unsuspiciousness. With the little escaped tendril of hair straying over her white nuque, and her immense and gentle eyes widely opened, she looked like a child whom some ruffian had with unexplained brutality hit and hurt. (“I am sure that I cannot be looking a day over fifteen.”) She made no protest, deciding to be too stunned for that, but only turned from one to another in innocent astonished alarm.
“Mrs. Aylmer has come to lay a very grave charge against you,” continued Camilla, in an awful voice. “She will explain to you.”
There was nothing in the world that Mrs. Aylmer at the present moment relished less than the task thus imposed upon her. In her angriest moments she had never contemplated having to bring the accusation with this horrible publicity against the poor child herself. “She looks such a mere child! not a day more than fifteen!” A quiet remonstrance with Camilla upon the subject had been all she had bargained for; and now to be suddenly summoned to stick a knife into this pretty, fragile, motherless creature who had run up to her with such a sweet sureness of welcome, such pretty open pleasure,—this poor little waif whom she felt so much more inclined to take into her warm motherly arms! No, it was more than human nature could stand.
“It was Catherine who heard. Catherine knows better than I; she will tell you,” was all that Catherine’s mother was able to produce.
Miss Aylmer, to do her justice, had no zest for the deputed duty, but as she had in the first instance been less attracted than her parent by the young sinner, so was it less impossible to her to be “faithful” in the discharge of the unpleasant feat they had come expressly to perform.