only, I suppose, for small parties." The colour came into her cheeks, and her brown eyes brightened. She was accustomed to think that her playing gave pleasure. Then she reproached herself for ingratitude, and she asked pardon. "I am cross with myself for being so deficient. Pray forgive me, Mrs. Cassilis. It is very kind of you to take all this trouble."
"My dear, you are a hundred times better than I expected."
Phillis remembered what she had said ten minutes before, but was silent.
"A hundred times better. Can you dance, my dear?"
"No. Antoinette tells me how she used to dance with the villagers when she was a little girl at Yport."
"That can be easily learned. Do you ride?"
At any other time Phillis would have replied in the affirmative. Now she only asserted a certain power of sticking on, acquired on pony-back and in a paddock. Mrs. Cassilis sighed.
"After all, a few lessons will give you a becoming seat. Nothing so useful as clever horsemanship. But how shall we disguise the fact that you cannot read or write?"
"I shall not try to disguise it," Phillis cried, jealous of Mr. Dyson's good name.
"Well, my dear, we come now to the most important question of all. Where do you get your dresses?"
"O Mrs. Cassilis! do not say that my dresses are calculated to repel!" cried poor Phillis, her spirit quite broken by this time. "Antoinette and I made this one between us. Sometimes I ordered them at Highgate, but I like my own best."
Mrs. Cassilis put up a pair of double eye-glasses, because they were now arrived at a really critical stage of the catechism. There was something in the simple dress which forced her admiration. It was quite plain, and, compared with her own, as a daisy is to a dahlia.
"It is a very nice dress," she said critically. "Whether it is your figure, or your own taste, or material, I do not know; but you are dressed perfectly, Miss Fleming. No young lady could dress better."
Women meet on the common ground of dress. Phillis blushed with pleasure. At all events, she and her critic had something on which they could agree.
"I will come to-morrow morning, and we will examine your wardrobe together, if you will allow me; and then we will go to Melton & Mowbray's. And I will write to Mr. Jagenal, asking him to bring you to dinner in the evening, if you will come."
"I should like it very much," said Phillis. "But you have made me a little afraid."
"You need not be afraid at all. And it will be a very small party. Two or three friends of my husband's, and two men who have just come home and published a book, which is said to be clever. One is a brother of Lord Isleworth, Mr. Ronald Dunquerque, and the other is a Captain Ladds. You have only to listen and look interested."
"Then I will come. And it is very kind of you, Mrs. Cassilis, especially since you do not like me."
That was quite true, but not a customary thing to be said. Phillis perceived dislike in the tones of her visitor's voice, in her eyes, in her manner. Did Mrs. Cassilis dislike her for her fresh and unsophisticated nature, or for her beauty, or for the attractiveness which breathed from every untaught look and gesture of the girl? Swedenborg taught that the lower nature cannot love the nobler; that the highest heavens are open to all who like to go there, but the atmosphere is found congenial to very few.
"Not like you!" Mrs. Cassilis, hardly conscious of any dislike, answered after her kind. "My dear, I hope we shall like each other very much. Do not let fancies get into your pretty head. I shall try to be your friend, if you will let me."
Again the wintry smile upon the lips, and the lifting of the cold eyes, which smiled not.
But Phillis was deceived by the warmth of the words. She took her visitor's hand and kissed it. The act was a homage to the woman of superior knowledge.
"Oh yes," she murmured, "if you only will."
"I shall call you Phillis. My name is Victoria."
"And you will tell me more about girls in society."
"I will show you girls in society, which is a great deal better for you," said Mrs. Cassilis.
"I looked at the girls I saw yesterday as we drove through the streets. Some of them were walking like this." She had been standing during most of this conversation, and now she began walking across the room in that ungraceful pose of the body which was more affected last year than at present. Ladies do occasionally have intervals of lunacy in the matter of taste, but if you give them time they come round again. Even crinolines went out at last, after the beauty of a whole generation had been spoiled by them. "Then there were others, who walked like this." She laid her head on one side, and affected a languid air, which I have myself remarked as being prevalent in the High Street of Islington. Now the way from Highgate to Carnarvon Square lies through that thoroughfare. "Then there were the boys. I never dreamed of such a lot of boys. And they were all whistling. This was the tune."
She threw her head back, and began to whistle the popular song of last spring. You know what it was. It came between the favourite air from the Fille de Madame Angot and that other sweet melody, "Tommy, make room for your Uncle," and was called "Hold the Fort." It refreshed the souls of Revivalists in Her Majesty's Theatre, and of all the street-boys in this great Babylon.
Mrs. Cassilis positively shrieked:
"My dear, dear DEAR girl," she cried, "you MUST not whistle!"
"Is it wrong to whistle?"
"Not morally wrong, I suppose. Girls never do anything morally wrong. But it is far worse, Phillis, far worse; it is unspeakably vulgar."
"Oh," said Phillis, "I am so sorry!"
"And, my dear, one thing more. Do not cultivate the power of mimicry, which you undoubtedly possess. Men are afraid of young ladies who can imitate them. For actresses, authors, artists, and common people of that sort, of course it does not matter. But for us it is different. And now, Phillis, I must leave you till to-morrow. I have great hopes of you. You have an excellent figure, a very pretty and attractive face, winning eyes, and a taste in dress which only wants cultivation. And that we will begin to-morrow at Melton and Mowbray's."
"Oh yes," said Phillis, clapping her hands, "that will be delightful! I have never seen a shop yet."
"She has – never – seen – a Shop!" cried Mrs. Cassilis. "Child, it is hard indeed to realise your Awful condition of mind. That a girl of nineteen should be able to say that she has never seen a Shop! My dear, your education has been absolutely unchristian. And poor Mr. Dyson, I fear, cut off suddenly in his sins, without the chance of repentance."
CHAPTER VII
"Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear."
Joseph Jagenal and his charge were the last arrivals at Mrs. Cassilis's dinner. It was not a large party. There were two ladies of the conventional type, well dressed, well looking, and not particularly interesting; with them their two husbands, young men of an almost preternatural solemnity – such solemnity as sometimes results from a too concentrated attention to the Money Market. They were there as friends of Mr. Cassilis, whom they regarded with the reverence justly due to success. They longed to speak to him privately on investments, but did not dare. There were also two lions, newly captured. Ladds, the "Dragoon" of the joint literary venture – "The Little Sphere, by the Dragoon and the Younger Son" – is standing in that contemplative attitude by which hungry men, awaiting the announcement of dinner, veil an indecent eagerness to begin. The other, the "Younger Son," is talking to Mr. Cassilis.
Phillis remarked that the room was furnished in a manner quite beyond anything she knew. Where would be the dingy old chairs, sofas, and tables of Mr. Dyson's, or the solid splendour of Joseph Jagenal's drawing-room, compared with the glories of decorative art which Mrs. Cassilis had called to her aid? She had no time to make more than a general survey as she went to greet her hostess.
Mrs. Cassilis, for her part, observed that Phillis was dressed carefully, and was looking her best. She had on a simple white dress of that soft stuff called, I think, Indian muslin, which falls in graceful folds. A