First love had been awakened in Frank Glyn's heart by the unlucky instrumentality of Miss Featherstone. Delighted with this new and beautiful idealism, he was eager to repay her with an extravagant gratitude for what, after all, was only his own gift to himself. Nelly knew nothing of this occult psychical problem; but was aware of the extravagant gratitude, and conducted herself towards it and him with such results as do not concern this present history.
"You are very hard upon the poor boy," said Annie Brunel.
Nelly pouted prettily, as if she had been ten years younger than she was, and said he had no business to be so quick-tempered. But after supper, when they were retiring for the night, and she had grown confidential, she confessed she was very fond of him, and hoped he would come again and "make it up."
"I can't help quarrelling with him, and he can't help quarrelling with me; and so we'll go on, and on, and on——"
"Until you marry."
"No, until I marry somebody else, for the sake of peace and quiet. And yet I declare if he were to come boldly up to-morrow and insist on my marrying him, I'd do it at once. But he is always too sensitive and respectful, and I can't help teasing him. Why doesn't he make me do what he wants? He's a man, and I'm a woman, and yet I never feel as if he were stronger than I was—as if I ought to look to him for strength, and advice, and what not. He's too much of a girl in his delicate frightened ways."
Next morning Nelly got a messenger and sent him up to Mr. John Hubbard's for Annie Brunel's boxes, which had been left packed up. Then they two went out to inspect some lodgings which had been recommended to them by Miss Featherstone's landlady. The house was a dingy building in Howland Street, Tottenham Court Road; but the rent of the two rooms was small, and Miss Brunel engaged them. She had very little money now in her purse. Mrs. Hubbard and she had been on so peculiar terms that both refrained from talking about salary; and when the boxes were brought down to Nelly's place by the messenger, no communication of any kind accompanied them.
"If they want to see me, Nelly," said Annie Brunel, "they will send to your house, thinking that my address. But I don't want my address to be given them, mind, on any consideration."
"But how are you to live, my dear?"
"I must find out, like other people," she said, with a smile.