“I must come to your first night. Have you ever acted in London?”
“Never.”
“You won’t be nervous?”
“Nervous! Don’t know the word.”
She bent to sip her coffee.
When Lady Holme reached the door of the Carlton, and was just entering one of the revolving cells to gain the pavement, she heard Lady Cardington’s low voice behind her.
“Let me drive you home, dear.”
At the moment she felt inclined to be alone. She had even just refused Sir Donald’s earnest request to accompany her to her carriage. Had any other woman made her this offer she would certainly have refused it. But few people refused any request of Lady Cardington’s. Lady Holme, like the rest of the world, felt the powerful influence that lay in her gentleness as a nerve lies in a body. And then had she not wept when Lady Holme sang a tender song to her? In a moment they were driving up the Haymarket together in Lady Cardington’s barouche.
The weather had grown brighter. Wavering gleams of light broke through the clouds and lay across the city, giving a peculiarly unctuous look to the slimy streets, in which there were a good many pedestrians more or less splashed with mud. There was a certain hopefulness in the atmosphere, and yet a pathos such as there always is in Spring, when it walks through London ways, bearing itself half nervously, like a country cousin.
“I don’t like this time of year,” said Lady Cardington.