Lavinia had not felt inclined to laugh before, but she now smiles broadly in pleased approval.
“She was mad at first,” continues the narrator; “but she had to give in; and I really do not see that she has much to complain of, for she is with him all day, and half the night!”
Lavinia hopes that the slight shudder with which she hears this statement—a shudder born of a compassion sharper and deeper than poor Mr. Smethurst’s ingloriously shattered features had called forth—is not visible to the eye of Miss Prince’s mother.
“Of course, at first,” pursues the latter, “the great attraction was that he had been in General ——’s Brigade—that dreadful business!”—with a distressful crease of reminiscence on her placid brow. “It seems like a horrible nightmare now! Yet, for the last day or two, I can’t help thinking it is for himself that she is so taken up with him.” After a moment’s reflection, “Well, after all, we know that he must be a fine fellow, by what he has done; and though all his people are in India, I fancy he is highly connected.”
The trend of the mother’s thoughts towards future developments is apparent. But Lavinia is spared the effort to hide how dearly, in her opinion, the wounded officer would buy his cure under the contingency glanced at, by the appearance of Féodorovna herself—Féodorovna, beautified, vivified, animated almost past recognition. It is not only that Miss Prince wears the most becoming of created garbs, whose bewitchingness many a mother of succumbing sons has cursed—the dress of a nurse; but her very features seem to have lost some of their poverty and paltriness; and gained in meaning and interest.
“Will you come at once, please? Mother, you have no right to delay Lavinia,” she says, scarcely sparing time for the curtest greeting. “He expects you, and a sick man should never be kept waiting.”
There is the authority and importance if a certificated official in voice and manner, and Lavinia would be sarcastically amused, if once again and more strongly than before, that trepidating dread of the coming interview had not laid hold of her.
“I am ready,” she answers quietly. “I was only waiting for you.” She is fighting tooth and nail with her agitation; telling herself what a Bedlamite thing it is, all the way across the tesselated marble of the pretentious sitting-hall, up the flights of the profoundly carpeted stairs, through the hot-water-warmed passages; and in outward appearance it is conquered by the time they reach and pause at a closed door.
“You must understand that he is not to be agitated in any way; that you must not approach any painful subject,” says Féodorovna, in an exasperating whisper of command.
“Wouldn’t it be better to put it off?” asks Miss Carew, in jarred recoiling from the just-opening portal; but her companion frowns her down.