Lady Luce went and leaned upon almost the very spot where Nell had
leaned; and she looked up at the sky and toward the twinkling lights,
and yawned.
"Sorry you have come, dear?" said Lady Chesney, with a little laugh. "I
know you so well that that yawn speaks volumes."
"It is rather slow, isn't it?" admitted Lady Luce, with the soft little
London drawl in her languid voice.
"My dear Luce, I told you it would be slow. What did you expect? These
dear, good people are quite out of the world--they are antediluvians.
The best people imaginable, of course, but not of the kind which gives
the sort of hop you care for. I'm sorry you came; but I did warn you,
dear, didn't I?"
"Yes, I know," assented Lady Luce.
"And, really, you seemed so bored--forgive me, dear; I don't want to be
offensive--that I thought that perhaps, after all, this rustic
entertainment might amuse you."
"I'm not bored, but I'm very sick and sorry for myself," said Luce. "One
always is when one has been a fool."
"My dear girl, you did it for the best."
"That always seems to me such a futile, and altogether ineffectual,
consolation," said Luce; "and people never offer it to you unless you
have absolutely made a fool of yourself."
"But I think, and everybody thinks with me, that you acted very wisely
under the circumstances. He could not expect you to marry a poor man.
Good heavens! fancy Luce and poverty! The combination is not to be
imagined for a moment! It is not your fault that circumstances are
altered, and that if you had only waited----"
Lady Luce made a little impatient movement with her hand.
"If I had only waited!" she said, with a mixture of irritation and
regret. "It was just my luck that I should meet him when I did."
There was a pause. It need scarcely be said that Nell was extremely
uncomfortable. These two were discussing a matter of the most private
character, and she was playing the unwelcome part of listener. Had she
been a woman of the world, it would have been easy for her to have
emerged from her hiding place, and to have swept past them slowly, as if
she had seen and heard nothing, as if she were quite unconscious of
their presence. But Nell was not a woman of the world; she was just Nell
of Shorne Mills, a girl at her first ball, and her first introduction to
society. She could not move--could only long for them to become either
silent or to go away and leave her free to escape.