Launa did not inquire the reason of her disappointment, but shook hands with her, accompanying her to the door, followed by the two men.
“Come to me when you are in difficulties,” said Mrs. Carden. “Your housemaids—”
She waved her parasol as the lift bore her down, and went home in a state of agitation; for in the future Launa would have great possessions, and the Carden exchequer was low. Could it be that the young man with the proverbs had discovered this? That he would desire Launa?
She resolved to invite herself to lunch with Launa the next Sunday, and to make Charlie call the day of his return.
CHAPTER VIII
Mrs. Carden drove home in a hansom, a strange and unusual extravagance. At Launa’s she had been bewildered—the conversation was so difficult to understand, so full of proverbs and of Solomon.
In the hansom Mrs. Carden would think well. She turned the situation over in her mind and stopped at a telegraph office to send Charlie a telegram. He was fishing with some uninteresting cousins in Kent. Mrs. Carden sent for her friend and confidante, Miss Sims. Miss Sims had been fat, she now was thin, and weighed only seven stone—she gloried in thin arms and a scraggy neck, and told everybody about herself in a sad voice. It is better to be poor and lean than poor and fat, the rich ask one to dine more frequently.
Mrs. Carden told her lean friend as much of the subject as was necessary for her to know.
Mrs. Carden’s principles were good—on principle. She was firmly persuaded that Charlie was deeply, virginly in love with Launa, and that Launa was wandering—was being attracted by strange men who talked of books and pianos with intimacy, and of proverbs. At first she had an idea that Mr. George was a leader of some kind. From the sheltered seclusion of beyond Bayswater she had read the papers, and had heard that at one fashionable church the clergyman lectured on dress in the pulpit, while his wife wore a becoming cassock in the chancel. Miss Sims and Mrs. Carden took counsel together, and the result thereof was that Charlie loved Launa, and Launa must see the advantage of such affection.