'My love, as though I should mind! And I am sure your father will be delighted to have you. He was only speaking of you an hour ago. He thinks you are behaving so well, Audrey, and so does Percival. Percival declared that he was quite proud of you at the Charringtons' "at home"; that it must have been such an ordeal for you to meet all those people. A girl in your position is generally so sensitive; but he told me that even Geraldine could not have been more dignified and at her ease.'
'That is high praise from Percival,' returned Audrey, smiling. 'He thinks Gage's manners are perfection—and so they are; but, mother, he need not have praised me so much. The people were nothing to me—I hardly thought of them at all. I was only remembering the last time I was there, and how Cyril was with me; it was the saddest evening I have spent yet.'
And then she sighed and disengaged herself from her mother's embrace.
'Don't let us talk of it, mother dear; one can bear things better if one does not speak of them. I am going to drive with Gage now, and perhaps she will keep me to dinner;' and then she went quickly away.
After all, it was better to do something than to waste her time in complaining: it was seldom that she allowed herself to speak of her feelings even to her mother, and if she suffered a word or two to escape her, she always reproached herself afterwards for her weakness.
When Mollie's letter arrived the next day she left it unopened until she was in her own room. Michael was up in town, as usual. He rarely spent more than a few days together at Woodcote now. Audrey did not regret his absence as she would otherwise have done, because she knew he would be with Cyril.
When her father glanced at her letter she said quietly that it was from Mollie, and then he made no further observation.
But when she was in her own room she opened it somewhat eagerly. 'Dear little Mollie! I never thought I should miss her quite so much,' she thought.
Evidently Mollie had taken a long time to write that letter; it had been commenced two days after her arrival in London, and it had not been completed until now.
The first two or three pages, written in Mollie's girlish angular handwriting, were filled with plaintive lamentations over her enforced exile and separation from her dear Miss Ross; and here and there a bleared word showed touchingly where a great tear had rolled down and blotted the page; but the next entry, written a few days afterwards, showed some signs that the prospect had brightened a little. One passage gave great pleasure to Audrey: