Part 14 (2/2)
”Your taste is as terrible as ever,” she declares sadly, shaking her head. ”What would you have been, Eleanor, if I hadn't taken you in hand?”
”I don't know, dear,” she cries, feeling she has been ungrateful. ”You have done me no end of good turns! But I love that portrait, it is sentiment.”
”An old nurse of yours and her husband?” asks Giddy.
Eleanor flushes rosy red.
She would like to say ”my parents,” but dreads Giddy's cynical smile.
She could not bear to hear them scoffed at, even in their absence.
Instead she murmurs:
”That woman nursed me in her arms as a baby, tended me in childhood--loved me always.”
Eleanor, on tiptoe, kisses the two faces in the photo.
”They are good,” she says, ”generous, kind-hearted; they might grace the grandest palace----”
”And smile at the claims of long descent,” quotes the widow. ”What a true little woman you are, Eleanor! Sometimes I half envy you, _gaucheries_ and all!”
”I can't help being stupid, Giddy; I was not born wise, like you.”
”Yet you really have developed marvellously under my training. The way you kept up the conversation at that dull luncheon party last week was admirable. I could not have done it better myself. As it was, a wretched sore throat condemned me to silence. How your badinage with Quinton astonished our hostess! She sat up so straight in her chair, I thought her fringe curls would reach the ceiling. She will never invite you there again, but it was simply splendid.
”'What do you think of Mrs. Roche?' I asked her afterwards, when Carol was bending over you in the window seat. She drew in her thin lips, and muttered: '_Most_ refres.h.i.+ng!' in a tone that meant something very different.”
”What did it mean?” cries Eleanor, with a gasp.
”I am in too great a hurry now to interpret,” answers Giddy, kissing her effusively. ”Ta-ta, beloved--and mind you adopt your best Society airs for Lady MacDonald to-morrow. She will swallow any amount, and may be very useful to us in town. _Comprenez-vous?_”
Eleanor is quite in a flutter the following afternoon. Her room looks bright with flowers purchased that morning in the town, her Crown Derby tea-service is set out on a new and dainty cloth, which had been laid by for an occasion. The curtains are drawn to shut away the dreary fog, and fire-light mingles with the rosy rays from a tall lamp.
Eleanor is still quite in a tremble lest the oil should smell, as Sarah frequently fails over the art of wick tr.i.m.m.i.n.g.
”How does my heliotrope go with this chair?” she asks, settling her sleeves, and critically contrasting the yellow brocade furniture with the shade of her gown.
Sarah a.s.sures her the effect is most desirable, as she places a pink iced cake by the tray.
”Don't keep Lady MacDonald waiting on the doorstep; you might be in the hall ready to answer the bell.”
”Yes, ma'am.”
”And if the fog gets denser light the gas outside.”
Eleanor draws her chair to the fire, and pretends to read a Society paper, but her thoughts are far from the fas.h.i.+on article.
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