not,” said Miss Maryon, decidedly. “Of course, if any one writes, it must be me. Not that I think it necessary – in fact, you are absurd, Celia. But still, as you have got it into your head. Thank you a thousand times,” she went on, turning to Lady Campion with a frank heartiness which was one of her attractions. “I am ashamed to make such a fuss. Perhaps Celia is right, but – you will ask us again to come to see you, I hope? I should so enjoy it, and I long to hear about Miss Norreys.”
“I like the elder girl best,” thought Lady Campion, as she entered her own house. “She is so entirely unaffected: the other, it strikes me, is a bit of a prig.”
But it is not the mark of a prig to look guilty; and poor Celia looked decidedly guilty as they drove off again. Mrs Balderson, gifted with the kind of tact which comes from an extremely warm heart, exerted herself to disperse the little cloud which had arisen, by giving her young friends a few details about Lady Campion.
“She is so clever,” she said; “she can do almost anything she sets herself to. But I think she takes up too many things. She has no children, and few responsibilities; for they are not very rich – just comfortably off – and her husband is much older than she, and manages everything, so her time is greatly in her own hands.”
“What a pity she married!” exclaimed Winifred, with extreme conviction. “She might have been really great at something, if she had not thrown herself into trammels.”
Mrs Balderson smiled, but there was some perplexity in her smile.
“My dear!” she exclaimed, “you don’t mean to say that that is how you look upon marriage – a happy marriage, too, for Sir Hugh Campion is devoted to his wife and she to him, only he spoils her a little.”
“Ah, yes,” said Winifred, “a plaything when not a slave! I have my own ideas, dear Mrs Balderson, but you mustn’t be shocked at me. You must allow that happy marriages are rare.”
“If you mean perfect marriages, perhaps so. But happy marriages – no, I can’t agree with you. I know as many happy-together husbands and wives as mothers and daughters, or brothers and sisters, or any other relations,” said Mrs Balderson.
“I am using the word ‘happy’ in a wider and deeper sense than yours,” said Winifred, a little loftily. “But we must talk about it some other time. I flatter myself I have thought it out pretty thoroughly.”
“At one – no, two-and-twenty?” said her hostess, with a good-humoured smile.
“I am four-and-twenty – past,” said Winifred. They had reached Mrs Balderson’s house by this time.
“Come and have some tea before you take off your things,” she said. “It is sure to be ready. And then you can write your letters up-stairs if you like. I hope the servants keep up a good fire in your room, Winifred?”
“Oh dear yes,” said Winifred. “Not that we really need one. London houses are so much warmer than country ones, you know.”
“Yes – we have a few advantages over you, I allow,” said Mrs Balderson. “This house is very warm though it is commonplace. But even that must be a change to you after your wonderful old home, with its quaint nooks and crannies and odd-shaped rooms, inexplicable staircases, and – oh, that reminds me. You must tell Lady Campion all about your ghost when we see her again. Ghosts are one of her manias.”
A slight frown showed itself on Winifred’s face at the words.
“You know I don’t believe in it,” she said. “It is so silly.”
“Oh, Winifred, don’t say that,” exclaimed Celia, with sudden anxiety. “It always frightens me a little when you speak so.”
Chapter Two.
Black and Pink
Eric Balderson was awaiting his mother – not impatiently, he was never impatient about anything – in the drawing-room, as she had foreseen when they went in. And so was tea, thanks to Eric. He was one of those people in whose case it is not difficult to take the bad with the good, for the latter so decidedly predominated. If slow, tiresomely slow sometimes, he was so considerate; if in a certain sense heavy, he was so entirely to be relied upon, and in unselfish thoughtfulness for others, above all in small matters – for in important ones I cannot endorse the popular axiom that “the best of men are selfish” – he was almost like a woman.
“Now, isn’t that nice?” said his mother, appreciatively. “Tea just ready. You are clever, Eric. Isn’t he a good boy, Winifred? Of course it’s all due to my splendid bringing up, but still he does me credit, doesn’t he?”
Winifred smiled, but did not speak. She knew he was excellent, but she did not care much for Eric Balderson. Celia liked him better.
“I suppose you have learned to be daughter as well as son to your mother,” she said quietly, as she stood by the table, while this very “tame-cat” young man, as Winifred contemptuously called him, poured out the tea for his mother and her young friends.
“Yes, that’s to say she has had to put up with my feeble efforts in that direction, failing better,” he said. “Now then, I think I have got hers – my mother’s – tea just as she likes it; will you be so good as to tell me of any peculiarities of taste of yours, or your sister’s – cream, sugar, both or neither, or which?”
“Winifred takes no cream – I take both. Yes, I will hand Mrs Balderson hers, and you can look after Winifred. This is mine? Thank you,” and Celia seated herself near the tea-table.
“Did you enjoy the concert this afternoon?” young Mr Balderson inquired. “It was a concert you were at, wasn’t it?”
“Oh yes, very much, very much indeed,” said Celia. “It was a very nice concert. But the thing that we cared for most was Miss Norreys’ singing.”
“Miss Norreys – Hertha Norreys, do you mean?”
“Yes,” said Mrs Balderson, “these girls have both fallen in love with her, Eric.”
“With her as well as with her singing,” said Winifred.
Eric looked up with a comical expression.
“She is very charming, I am told,” he said. “I cannot testify to the fact from personal experience, for you can’t exactly call a person charming who deliberately snubs you.”
“How do you mean?” said his mother. “I didn’t know you had ever met Miss Norreys, and if you have, why should you think she snubbed you?”
“Because she did,” Eric replied simply.
Winifred’s eyes sparkled. Her admiration for Hertha rose still higher.
“Just what I should have expected of her,” she thought to herself.
“My dear Eric,” said his mother, with a very slight touch of annoyance in her tone, “I think you talk nonsense sometimes.”
He smiled.
“Sometimes, perhaps, but not always,” he said.
But he rose from his seat as he spoke, for he was more than quick at reading his mother’s feelings, and went towards the piano.
“I’ll look out the songs, mother, that I want to try over,” he remarked. “That’s to say, if you are still good for a little practising before dinner.”
“Certainly I am. Indeed, we hurried home partly on that account,” Mrs Balderson replied. “I will run up-stairs and take off my things in a moment. And you, dears, will have a little quiet time for your letters, and for resting, if you are tired.”
“I shall be glad to write my letters, but I am not the least tired, thank you,” said Winifred, in her clear, slightly incisive tone, almost as if resenting the kindly imputation.
“I am, rather,” said Celia gently.
“I scarcely see how you could help it, after such a busy day,” agreed Mrs Balderson.