She spoke the words scarcely above her breath, and was hardly aware that
in a sudden craving for sympathy and counsel she had uttered them.
"Will he?" Lady Wilmot laughed out. "If you could have heard him
to-day when I told him you had talked of going!"
Claudia walked on silently. The longing had changed to shrinking, and
she wished that Lady Wilmot would leave her, but instead of this she
ventured on another step.
"I assure you," she said, "that Arthur is a dear fellow."
"Oh, don't let us talk about him any more!" cried the girl with sudden
passion. She felt tossed, dragged, buffeted, a very shuttlecock of
circumstance, impatient of the insistent tones in which that "Claudia!"
still rang in her ears. Harry Hilton had also uttered her name, but it
had not stirred her in the same imperative way, it had not been
emphasised so disastrously, or burnt upon her memory. She trembled as
she spoke, and Lady Wilmot looked at her with some bewilderment as to
the cause of her emotion. She was not quite sure that it boded well.
"No, you are right, we won't talk about him any more," she agreed
soothingly. "You have promised to stay, and that is all we wanted. I
foresee that after all we shall have a good time, and I am so glad, for
Arthur has always been my favourite cousin, though he is sometimes
tiresome, and I have always tried to help him to what he wanted. It
used to be jam out of the housekeeper's closet," she added, with a
laugh.
The girl would not laugh. "She takes it all so seriously!" Lady Wilmot
explained afterwards to her husband with light compunction. "Dear me,
Peter, if I had thought so tremendously about such episodes, you'd have
married a wreck! So far as I can remember, I used rather to enjoy
them."
This was not Claudia's condition. Enjoyment! It was misery; expectant,
frightened, yet entrancing misery, such as she had never pictured to
herself. It had been altogether different with Harry Hilton; she had
scarcely thought of him except as a momentarily disturbing incident,
and, quite sure that his healthy young face would never pale a shade, no
idea of suffering had so much as crossed her mind. She flung him a
restless thought now and then, comparing the two men, and certain that
all the intellectual advantages were heaped on Fenwick. His natural
gifts were varied, and he knew extraordinarily well how to make them
appear at their best, helped to it by a dominating vanity, at once so
strong and sensitive, that it never landed him in ridiculous positions,
as may easily be the case with a coarser kind. Claudia, for instance,
had never guessed its existence. She thought of him as a shrewd keen
man, forgave him some shortness of temper, and liked the touch of
roughness he occasionally showed. It had struck her that Miss Arbuthnot
cared for him, and that he was indifferent, so that his evident
attraction for herself flattered her. These were trifles, the real tie
lay in his dash to her rescue and consequent suffering. Nothing could
have smitten down her spirited independence so completely as the
knowledge that he lay helpless owing to what he had done for her; it was
the very thing to make her feel that any sacrifice must be made which
could compensate.