"I am going to do something that will please you to-morrow," Miss Grey said, feeling that she owed her companion some atonement for not warming to the mention of her brother. "I am positively going to hunt out Lucy Money. They must have returned by this time."
This was really very pleasant news for Miss Blanchet. She had been longing for her friend to renew her acquaintance with Miss Lucy Money, about whom she had many dreams. It did not occur to Mary Blanchet to question directly even in her own mind the decrees of Miss Grey, or to say to herself that the course of life which they were leading was not the most delightful that could be devised. But, if the little poetess could have ventured to translate vague yearnings into definite thoughts, she would, perhaps, have acknowledged to herself a faint desire that the brilliant passages of the London career she had marked out for herself in anticipation should come rather more quickly than they just now seemed likely to do. At present there was not much difference perceptible to her between London and Duke's-Keeton. Nobody came to see them. Even her brother had not yet presented himself. Her poem did not make much progress; there was no great incentive to poetic work. Minola and she did not know any poets, or artists, or publishers. Mary Blanchet's poetic tastes were of a somewhat old-fashioned school, and did not include any particular care for looking at trees, and fields, and water, and skies, although these objects of natural beauty were made to figure in the poems a good deal in connection with, and illustrative of, the emotions of the poetess. Therefore the rambles in the park were not so delightful to her as to her leader; and when the evening set in, and Minola and she read to each other, Mary Blanchet was always rather pleased if an opportunity occurred for interrupting the reading by a talk. She was particularly anxious that Minola should renew her acquaintance with her old schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money, whose father she understood to be somehow a great sort of person, and through whom she saw dimly opening up a vista, perhaps the only one for her, into society and literature. But the Money family were out of town when our friends came to London, and Miss Blanchet had to wait; and, even when it was probable that they had returned, Miss Grey did not seem very eager to renew the acquaintance. Indeed, her resolve to visit Miss Money now was entirely a good-natured concession to the evident desire of Mary Blanchet. Minola saw her friend's little ways and weaknesses clearly, and smiled now and then as she thought of them, and liked her none the less for them—rather, indeed, felt her breast swell with kindliness and pity. It pleased her generous heart to gratify her companion in every way, to find out things that she liked and bring them to her, to study her little innocent vanities, that she might gratify them. What little dainties Mary Blanchet liked to have with her tea, what pretty ribbons she thought it became her to wear—these Miss Grey was always perplexing herself about. When she found that she liked to be alone sometimes, that she must have a long walk unaccompanied, that she must have thoughts which Mary would not care to hear, then she felt a pang of remorse, as if she were guilty of a breach of true camaraderie, and she could not rest until she had relieved her soul by some special mark of attention to her friend. On the other hand, Mary Blanchet, for all her dreams and aspirations, was a sensible and managing little person, who got for Miss Grey about twice the value that she herself could have obtained out of her money. This was a fact which Minola always took care to impress upon her companion, for she dreaded lest Miss Blanchet should feel herself a dependent. Miss Blanchet, however, in a modest way, knew her value, and had besides one of the temperaments to which dependence on some really loved being comes natural, and is inevitable.
So Minola set out next day, about three o'clock, to look up her schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money. She went forth on her mission with some unwillingness, and with a feeling as if she were abandoning some purpose or giving up a little of a principle in doing so. "I came to London to live alone and independent," she said to herself sometimes, "and already I am going out to seek for acquaintances. Why do I do that? I want strength of purpose. I am just like everybody else"; and she began, as was her wont, to scrutinize her own weaknesses, and bear heavily on them. For, absurd as it may seem, this odd young woman really did propose to live alone—herself and Mary Blanchet—in London until they died—alone, that is, so far as social life and acquaintanceships in society were concerned. Vast and vague schemes for doing good to her neighbors, and for striving in especial to give a helping hand to troubled women, were in Miss Grey's plans of life; but society, so called, was to have no part in them. It did not occur to her that she was far too handsome a girl to be allowed to put herself thus under an extinguisher or behind a screen. When people looked after her as she passed through the streets, she assumed that they noticed some rustic peculiarity in her dress or her hat, and she felt a contempt for them. Her love of London did not imply a love of Londoners, whom in general she thought rude and given to staring. But even if she had thought people were looking at her because of her figure, her face, her eyes, her superb hair, she would have felt a contempt for them all the same. She had a proud indifference to personal beauty, and looked down upon men whose judgment could be affected by the fact that a woman had finer eyes, or brighter hair, or a more shapely mould than other women.
Once Minola was positively on the point of turning back, and renouncing all claim on the acquaintanceship of her former school companion. She suddenly remembered, however, that in condemning her own fancied weakness she had forgotten that her visit was undertaken to oblige Mary Blanchet. "Poor Mary! I have only one little acquaintanceship that has anything to do with society, and am I to deny her that chance if she likes it?" She went on rapidly and resolutely. Sometimes she felt inclined to blame herself for bringing Mary Blanchet away from Keeton, although Mary had for years been complaining of her life and her work there, and beseeching Miss Grey not to leave her behind when she went to live in London.
It was a beautiful autumn day. London looks to great advantage on one of these rare days, and Miss Grey felt her heart swell with mere delight as she looked from the streets to the sky and from the sky to the streets. She passed through one or two squares, and stopped to see the sun, already going down, send its light through the bare branches of the trees. The western sky was covered with gray, silver-edged clouds, which brightened into blots of golden fire as they came closer in the track of the sun. The air was mild, soft, and almost warm. All poets and painters are full of the autumnal charms of the country; but to certain oddly constituted minds some street views in London on a fine autumn day have an unspeakable witchery. Miss Grey walked round and round one of the squares, and had to remind herself of her purpose on Mary Blanchet's behalf in order to impel herself on.
The best of the day had gone, and the early evening was looking somewhat chill and gloomy between the huge ramparts of the Victoria street houses by the time that Miss Grey stood in that solemn thoroughfare, and her heart sank a little as she reached the house where her old school friend lived.
"Perhaps Lucy Money is altogether changed," Miss Grey said to herself as she came up to the door. "Perhaps she won't care about me; perhaps I shan't like her any more; and perhaps her mamma will think me a dreadful person for not honoring my stepfather and stepmother. Perhaps there are brothers—odious, slangy young men, who think girls fall in love with them. Oh, yes, here is one of them."
For just as she had rung the bell a hansom cab drove up to the door, and a tall, dark-complexioned young man leaped out. He raised his hat with what seemed to Miss Grey something the manner of a foreigner when he saw her standing at the door, and she felt a momentary thrill of relief, because, if he was a foreigner, he could not be Lucy Money's brother. Besides, she knew very well that the great houses in Victoria street were occupied by several tenants, and there was good hope that the young man might have business with the upper story, and she with the ground floor.
The young man was about to ring the bell, when he stopped and said:
"Perhaps you have rung already?"