The delinquent entered as she spoke – before, indeed, the door had closed behind the two sisters. He came quietly into the room with some little laughing rejoinder to his mother, and walked over to where Mr Balderson was standing, without seeming to notice either Winifred or Celia in any special way. Yet Celia was perfectly aware that even as he passed them he took in every detail of their appearance and attire.
“I hope he thinks we are nicely dressed,” she thought, though she would not have liked Winifred to read her unspoken reflection. “I suspect he is rather critical, though in a nice way. Well, Winifred looks very pretty, I am sure, but I wish she were not quite so fond of black.”
Yes, Winifred looked very well indeed, for, though her black dress was almost severely simple, it was of rich material and fitted well. This was in accordance with Miss Maryon’s principles. She would have scorned to spend much time or thought upon her clothes, still shabbiness or dowdiness or eccentricity she did not consider a fitting accompaniment of woman as she should be. The worst that could be said of her way of dressing was that it was far too old, and on the whole monotonous. But to strangers this latter defect was naturally absent, and perhaps the very heaviness and stiffness of style she affected had practically the opposite result of making the girl herself look all the younger.
However that may have been, she was genuinely indifferent about herself; to-night her thoughts were more on dress than usual, nevertheless, for she was exceedingly interested in Celia’s appearance, and, considering her theories, almost inconsistently eager that she should be admired.
“Does she not look lovely?” she could not help whispering to Mrs Balderson, and her whole face sparkled with pleasure when there came the hearty reply.
“Most lovely; that pale pink suits her to perfection, and – ” But the rest of the kind woman’s admiration remained unexpressed, for at that moment some of her guests were announced, and she had to hasten forward to meet them. Others followed quickly, causing a little bustle in the room, under cover of which a young man made his way in quietly; not sorry to do so, if the truth were told, for Mr Lennox Maryon, very much at home in the hunting-field or at a steeplechase, was decidedly shy in a London drawing-room. Nor was the consciousness of his cousin Winifred’s observant, albeit short-sighted, brown eyes, likely to put him more at his ease.
He was in luck, however, on the present occasion. Both Winifred, and Celia were for the moment somewhat apart from the Baldersons and their other guests, feeling, perhaps, as perfect strangers to the latter, just a little “out of it.” Lennox hurried up to them with great satisfaction, though not without a touch of the nervousness which somehow always hovered about him when near Winifred.
“How are you?” he said with somewhat unnecessary emphasis, considering there was not the slightest need for anxiety as to the state of health of either of the girls. “So delighted to find you here. When did you come up? left all well at home, eh?”
“One question at a time, please, Lennox, if you have no objection,” said Winifred, coldly. “Not that any of yours strike me as very important; we came up yesterday, and we are both perfectly well, and as you saw everybody at home the day before, there is no reason for special anxiety about their health that I can see.”
Lennox gave a half-awkward little laugh. What he was laughing at he could not have told, but he took it for granted that Winifred’s speeches had something clever in them, and the laugh helped to hide his shyness. And he did not overhear Celia’s reproachful tone as she whispered in her sister’s ear:
“Winifred, how can you? Poor old Lennox.”
“We are enjoying ourselves very much indeed, Lennox, you will be glad to hear,” the younger girl said brightly. “I can scarcely believe we only left them all yesterday. It is delightful to see a home face again.”
The young man turned to her gratefully, his handsome, rather sunburnt features lighting up with a very pleasant smile.
“Good little Celia,” he said approvingly. “I don’t believe there’s much fear of your falling in love with London.”
There was a little bitterness underlying the accent he put on the pronoun. Winifred heard it, and was ready for battle on the spot.
“Celia is absurd,” she exclaimed. “She is only talking that kind of way to please you, Lennox. Why, the very first thing she said this morning was: ‘Oh, Winifred, if only we were to be here three months instead of three weeks!’ You know it was, Celia.”
“And no harm in it, that I can see, if she did say so,” said Lennox, flushing a little. “I think London’s very good fun, myself, once in a way.”
He could pluck up a spirit now and then with Winifred, but I scarcely think it profited him much.
“Very good fun!” she repeated. “You do express yourself so oddly, Lennox. I am afraid our ideas on the subject of London are not more likely to agree than on – ”
But a touch on her arm stopped her. Celia was drawing her attention to the fact that Mr Balderson was on the point of introducing a man to her. An elderly, or at least middle-aged, man, whose name was known to her as that of a distinguished-in-his-own-line writer.
“Mr Sunningdale – Miss Maryon.”
The middle-aged man bowed somewhat absently. He dined out most nights of his life; he saw only a young woman in black, whom he did not remember ever having seen before, and he had been interrupted in a conversation, at the other side of the room, with a woman he knew well, whose conversation always amused him. These little contretemps will happen in the best-regulated houses. He was not an ill-tempered man, and resigned himself to fate. But Winifred’s face, on the contrary, changed from steely coldness to sunshine. You would scarcely have recognised her for the same girl, as she replied to some little commonplace observation of the great man’s with her most winning manner.
“Good eyes,” thought he to himself, “I hope I shall not need to talk to her much;” while Winifred, in a flutter of gratification, was saying to herself how very kind it was of Mrs Balderson to have given her to Mr Sunningdale, of all people, to take her in to dinner.
Lennox moved away with a little sigh, which Celia heard, though it was all but inaudible. The girl’s tender heart quivered for him, for she was far from endorsing her elder sister’s startling suggestion that Lennox did not really “care for her.”
“He is just devoted to her – quite devoted,” thought Celia. “How unlucky it seems! These things generally go that way, I suppose; at least, if what one reads in novels is true. I hope that I shall never care for any one, and that no one will care for me, for it would be sure to be only on one side or the other.”
She had no time to say anything consoling or sympathising to her cousin – indeed, what could she have said? – for he was already told off to his lady, the young Mrs Fancourt, whom Mr Balderson had alluded to; and Celia herself was soon appropriated by the husband of the pretty little woman in question, on whose arm she made her way down-stairs.
She had scarcely looked at him; she was thinking so much of Winifred and Lennox, that she was quite indifferent about her own fate, and Mr Fancourt, a good-natured man, whose rather limited ideas were entirely absorbed by admiration for his wife, soon gave her up as decidedly dull and heavy. Celia did not care – she had plenty to think of and plenty to amuse herself with; she was rather glad when her monosyllables resulted in Mr Fancourt’s directing his attentions to the woman on his other side. And one or two courses had been removed before a voice on her right hand startled her into realising that she had a neighbour in that quarter too.
“Miss Maryon, what are you thinking about so intently?” were the words she heard. “I have been watching you for quite five minutes – you are in a regular brown study.”
Celia started, then smiled, and, finally, as she became satisfied that Eric – for it was he – was not really shocked at her, could not repress a little laugh.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “Why didn’t you speak to