"Don't grudge me my few remaining holidays; I shall not have too many in the future. Yes, darlings"--this to Betty--"you must go. Caroline wants to make you ready for lunch. You are going to put on those pretty new frocks that I sent down and make yourselves ever so smart. Of course you shall sit next me at luncheon. What an idea! Where else would you sit? I shall have one of you on each side of me."
Mrs. Brenton was speaking as the children were going out of the room with Caroline.
"So it was an excuse," Caroline heard her say, in a strained voice; "and Pamela Bardolph is not ill?"
"An excuse, of course," Mrs. Lancing answered, with a laugh. "I knew they were going to have a really lovely time, and when Pamela pressed me to go just for one night, I really could not resist the temptation. We had such fun, Agnes, and finished up with...."
Caroline hurried the children out of the room. She always dreaded what Betty would repeat. The child was very sharp, and her memory was extremely retentive.
It was difficult to chat lightly with the children as she dressed them and made them pretty for the big Christmas Day luncheon.
Caroline had said "Good-bye" to all her former isolation.
Though she still stood alone, and had no one on whom she could make a real claim, her life all at once seemed charged with ties and privileges; already she had commenced to expand, to weave the tendrils of her affections, her sympathy, and her tender thought in and about these people among whom she now lived and moved.
She recognized a great debt of gratitude to Agnes Brenton, but for Camilla she felt something deeper than gratitude.
In this phase of awakened emotions she would naturally have turned to some outlet for her feelings, even if she had drifted into touch with the most ordinary, the most commonplace of individuals; but thrust, as she had been, suddenly into the stirring atmosphere of life as it was lived in Camilla Lancing's household, and hemmed about by the beguiling influences of an absolutely fascinating personality, Caroline at once lost her heart.
But just because this heart was stirred so strongly, so deeply, she could not deny herself the right to judge Camilla; and it was an easy task to judge now.
