"Oh! my goodness," said Camilla, "that must be Sammy, and, of course, I am late! Dennis, get me into my gown quickly ... quickly!"

Caroline moved to the door.

"Good night," she said. "I hope you are going to enjoy yourself."

Camilla called her back.

"Do one thing for me like a darling, will you?" she asked. "Just run down and tell Sir Samuel that I shall be with him directly. I promised faithfully to be in time, and he does so hate to be kept waiting."

Some one was being shown up into the drawing-room as Caroline left Mrs.

Lancing's bedroom.

She paused a moment, and then went down the stairs.

"It's Sir Samuel Broxbourne, miss," the parlourmaid said.

Caroline nodded her head.

"Yes; Mrs. Lancing knows. I have a message for him."

Caroline's first impression as she opened the drawing-room door was that the young man standing with his back to the fireplace was much too big for the room.

Sir Samuel had not troubled to remove his overcoat, and the heavy fur collar on this coat accentuated the squareness and breadth of his shoulders.

He always looked red, as if he had just come out of a bath, or had been running; his hair, too, had a touch of red in it.

Caroline took all this in at one glance, and she decided right away that he was a very ugly young man.

"Mrs. Lancing begs me to say she will be down directly," she said, but she did not advance into the room.

Sir Samuel whipped his single eyegla.s.s into what he called his "off"

eye, and took a step forward. As Caroline was withdrawing, and the door was half closed, he spoke to her.

"Here, I say," he said, "can you ... I mean is there any one in the house who can glue this b.u.t.ton on for me?"

He pulled off one of his white gloves as he spoke, and held it out to her.

With a little frown Caroline turned, paused an instant, and then advanced and took the glove from him.

"It's a beastly nuisance when the b.u.t.tons come off," said Sir Samuel; "the Johnnies that sell gloves ought to do the st.i.tching themselves--eh?..."

He was studying Caroline attentively, wondering the while who the deuce she was. He thought he had sampled all the inmates of Mrs. Lancing's small house. Those he had seen he had found very unexciting; but this girl was different.

"I think this b.u.t.ton is quite firm, it will not come off just yet,"

said Caroline, and she gave him back the glove.

Before he could speak again she had vanished, and the door was shut behind her.

Sir Samuel pulled the glove on with a jerk.

"D----d fine eyes," he said, "but she knows all about that, and puts frills on in consequence."

Mrs. Lancing's door was widely open, and she herself arrayed in all her glory as Caroline mounted the stairs and paused on the landing.

"Is he very furious?" asked Mrs. Lancing.

"May I admire you?" asked Caroline in reply. "This sort of thing is all so new to me. I have never seen any one in evening dress before, except once, and that was in a fashion paper." Her eyes had a glow in them as she scanned Camilla, over whose white clinging gown Dennis was just slipping a theatre wrap of pink chiffon and chinchilla. "How Betty would love to see you as you are now. She imagines you go to a fairy-world every night, and if she saw you she would believe in her dreams."

"I feel as if I were coming to pieces," Camilla laughed. "But I simply detest being hurried! Dennis, put a safety-pin in here, and you need not sit up. I have my key."

As she was pa.s.sing out Mrs. Lancing paused by Caroline and kissed her lightly.

"You are a nice thing," she said affectionately, "and I wish you were coming with me. I shall take you to the play one night." Then gathering up her skirts, she rustled softly on to the landing and disappeared.

Sir Samuel's patience had evidently evaporated; he had emerged from the drawing-room, and was now expostulating.

"Don't swear too audibly," Caroline heard Mrs. Lancing say, with her rippling laugh, "or you will wake the babies, and then everybody will call you a monster!"

The girl's delicate brows met in a frown. Even in this far-off way she felt the arrogant familiarity of this man's manner towards Mrs.

Lancing, and resented it, just as she had resented his attempt at impertinent familiarity with herself. She supposed, however, as Sir Samuel seemed to be so intimate, that he must be a connection, probably a near relative. Later on, however, when Dennis came up from her supper, and they went together through a minute examination of the children's belongings, Caroline learned casually, from the maid's chatter, that Sir Samuel Broxbourne was not really a relation--only a friend; and she found herself wondering a little why so refined and dainty a woman as Camilla should care for friendship with such a man.

This was not the only matter that seemed strange and even inexplicable where Mrs. Lancing was concerned. Naturally Caroline was a novice in life as it was lived in the world in which the children's mother occupied a prominent place; she was, indeed, to a great extent ignorant of the ways and doings of everyday people (since at school she had known nothing of what pa.s.sed beyond the school boundaries, and in Octavia Baynhurst's house her outlook had been even more circ.u.mscribed), so that it was no great matter for surprise if she found herself unable to understand all that pa.s.sed about and around her now. But what she lacked in actual experience, in definite knowledge, was filled in by natural wit and sympathy and intuition. It needed no deep study to grasp the best and sweetest traits of so human a being as Camilla, nor was it necessary for worldly knowledge to open her eyes to the glaring faults, the amazing contrasts in this woman's character.

The first time she had heard Mrs. Lancing tell a lie--quite pleasantly, and without the slightest effort or hesitation--Caroline had winced; it had been such a trivial, such a petty untruth; but what had given it importance in Caroline's eyes, accentuating the unworthiness of the act, had been the fact that both the children had been present, and that Betty had laughed at her mother's cleverness as at an excellent joke.

To doubt the woman's anxious, deep-rooted love for her children was to doubt the light of the sun itself; but Caroline summed it up as a love without discrimination or any sense of real responsibility.

Camilla Lancing would have been aghast if any one had told her this; for there would be no sacrifice too great--of this the girl was convinced--for the mother to undertake on behalf of her children, if circ.u.mstances should demand it of her.

Caroline, however, was judging her by her everyday att.i.tude, when life was running on ordinary and not heroic lines, and she drew her conclusions from those unconscious signs and uncounted actions that reveal the personality far more truthfully than any deliberate or a.n.a.lytical study can ever do.

Dennis, who was a garrulous person, was fond of dilating on her mistress's little ways; but she was loyal. It was soon made evident that she was very fond of Mrs. Lancing.

"She never had no proper chance," she said this night to Caroline as they made notes and agreed to buy only what was absolutely necessary.

"Started out, she did, with everything that money can give. My sister was a second housemaid in her old home. That was before her father lost everything and they come down to next to nothing. Miss Camilla was only a bit of a child then, and if Sir Edmund had done the proper thing by her he would have let his sister take her. You see his wife died when Miss Camilla was born. But he wouldn't part with her--and so they went wandering about goodness knows where, never staying more nor a month in any place. How I came to know so much was because I took service with Sir Edmund's sister, Lady Settlewood, and a hard place I had with her too; a little bit different to what I get now! Her ladyship was for ever wantin' to have Miss Camilla to live with her, she'd no children of her own. She declared as it was a sin and a crime that the girl should grow up any-hows, with no chance of schooling; but there, she just talked to deaf ears! For if even the father would have given her up, Miss Camilla wouldn't have left him neither. There's a picture of Sir Edmund hanging beside Mrs. Lancing's bed," said Dennis. "You look at it when you go in her room next time, and you'll see what a nice face he had. Many's the time he's given me a sovereign when I know he'd none too many to spare!"

Caroline interposed here a little gently.

"Perhaps Mrs. Lancing would rather not have these things talked about, Dennis?"

But Dennis, who was folding up the clothes and putting them away, only shrugged her shoulders.

"She knows there'll be nothing told bad if it's told by me," she said; "besides," added the woman, "I'm telling you this because you're the first person as has come into this house as I'd care to see stay in, and that's the truth. My dear," said the maid, straightening herself for a minute, "she wants a friend awful badly. Some one different to me. There's things she could talk to you about which she couldn't talk to me. I'd like you to know, now you're starting out, just what she is, and why things seem to go so crookedly. How do you expect her to keep account of pennies when she was brought up in the way she was? I always 'oped her ladyship was going to stand by Miss Camilla, and so I think she would have done if only there hadn't been that miserable marriage!"

Dennis was silent for a while, then she said--

"Poor Sir Edmund, he just broke his heart when Miss Camilla run off with Captain Lancing. I'll never forget his look the day he came to her ladyship's house and asked if we could any of us give him news of his girl!" Dennis was running her hand into a pile of stockings all riddled with holes. "You see he'd never taken any heed of the fact, as Miss Camilla was a beauty." She talked on. "He'd always laughed when her ladyship kept on as he ought to have a governess or somebody about with Miss Camilla. He looked on her as no more nor a child. And so she was a child," said Dennis, hotly, as if she were suddenly defending her mistress against some accuser, and she flung the stockings on to the table viciously. "How could _she_ know what she was doing? Wasn't he handsome enough to turn the head of any girl? Who was to think that he'd be such a blackguard, and he coming of such a sanctimonious church-going lot? People as turn their noses up at everybody who hasn't got the Lord's Prayer printed on their backs! If them sort of folk is saints, give me sinners, I say!"