"I shall soon have finished."
"Oh no," said Lady Wilmot. "I know Peter wants your advice about some
outlying things. Why should you go? You are your own mistress, aren't
you?"
With a pang quite new to her, she owned that she was.
"And I heard you say you had no other engagement. Then what stands in
your way? Don't say you find us horrid!" she added, with a gravity
which concealed a smile. "Your going would be an awful disappointment
to poor Arthur."
"But he is much better?"
"Better--yes. But I am afraid it must be a long business, and,"--she
hesitated--"don't you think he deserves a little reward?" The girl
winced and grew pale. As Fenwick said, she took things violently, she
was at an age when she unconsciously exaggerated her own importance in
the world, and it seemed to her as if all manner of tremendous issues
hung upon her answer. Besides, up to now, since the accident Lady
Wilmot had not dropped such a hint. Her heart beat too fast for her to
speak. At last she turned a white face upon her companion.
"I don't know," she said vaguely.
Lady Wilmot drew her face towards her and kissed her.
"Stay!" she said lightly.
"Very well," returned Claudia, drawing a deep breath.
For in that moment she renounced all--freedom, ambition--something
within her whispering persistently that if she stayed it would be to
become Arthur Fenwick's wife. Her thoughts were sufficiently in a whirl
for her not to know whether the conviction brought delight or terror,
but they had fastened themselves upon him so continuously of late, that
quite an unexpected feeling had sprung up in her heart, so that, if she
were not in love with himself, she was nearly so with the image she had
created. Her very indifference became a wrong when she reflected that
it had caused him such suffering.
Lady Wilmot's sympathy was of a light-hearted nature, it was not
profound enough to enable her to plunge into depths, but Claudia's was a
sufficiently transparent countenance to betray that it cost her a
struggle to utter these two words, and if there was a struggle, it
probably had to do with more than the mere fact of going or staying.
She therefore hastened to encourage her.
"I am more than glad," she said smiling. "To-morrow that odious Lady
Bodmin--as Peter isn't here I may abuse her--departs, and though the
Comyns are due, I am not quite sure that Mr Comyns and Arthur hit it
off very well; at any rate, I don't think Arthur cares much for either
of them. So I particularly want him to have something pleasant to look
forward to."