“Oh, I'm so glad!” said she, with her eyes glistening. “But I'm afraid one can't get a bonnet fit to wear--for a guinea.”
Dr. Staines visited his little patient every day, and received his guinea. Mrs. Lucas also called him in for her own little ailments, and they were the best possible kind of ailments: for, being imaginary, there was no limit to them.
Then did Mrs. Staines turn jealous of her husband. “They never ask me,” said she; “and I am moped to death.”
“It is hard,” said Christopher, sadly. “But have a little patience. Society will come to you long before practice comes to me.”
About two o'clock one afternoon a carriage and pair drove up, and a gorgeous footman delivered a card--“Lady Cicely Treherne.”
Of course Mrs. Staines was at home, and only withheld by propriety from bounding into the passage to meet her school-fellow. However, she composed herself in the drawing-room, and presently the door was opened, and a very tall young woman, richly but not gayly dressed, drifted into the room, and stood there a statue of composure.
Rosa had risen to fly to her; but the reverence a girl of eighteen strikes into a child of twelve hung about her still, and she came timidly forward, blushing and sparkling, a curious contrast in color and mind to her visitor; for Lady Cicely was Languor in person--her hair whitey-brown, her face a fine oval, but almost colorless; her eyes a pale gray, her neck and hands incomparably white and beautiful--a lymphatic young lady, a live antidote to emotion. However, Rosa's beauty, timidity, and undisguised affectionateness were something so different from what she was used to in the world of fashion, that she actually smiled, and held out both her hands a little way. Rosa seized them, and pressed them; they left her; and remained passive and limp.
“O Lady Cicely,” said Rosa, “how kind of you to come.”
“How kind of you to send to me,” was the polite, but perfectly cool reply. “But how you are gwown, and--may I say impwoved?--You la petite Lusignan! It is incwedible,” lisped her ladyship, very calmly.
“I was only a child,” said Rosa. “You were always so beautiful and tall, and kind to a little monkey like me. Oh, pray sit down, Lady Cicely, and talk of old times.”