"Oh yes!" replied Dora, rising to go. "Like Mr. Martin, I am not sure that the old pattern is worth preserving."
"I wish I could go with you," said Mrs. Agar, holding up her cheek in an absent way for the farewell kiss; "I have not been to town for ages."
"Why not come too?" she said aloud, gathering together stick, basket, and gloves.
"There is Arthur," replied the lady. "I am afraid he will not care to leave home just now, after so great a blow."
"All the more reason why he should go to town for a little and forget--himself."
Mrs. Agar smiled sadly and waited for further persuasion. She had fully made up her mind to go to Brighton, but was anxious first that the whole parish should press her to do so against her will.
"It will be very nice," continued Dora, "to have you to help me to keep my flighty progenitors in order. Now I _must_ go."
With a nod and a light laugh she closed the library door behind her, having apparently forgotten the sadder events of the visit. But in her basket she had the diary.
Be as one that knoweth, and yet holdeth his tongue.
"And, of course, you know every one in the room?" Dora was saying to her cousin as the orchestra struck suddenly into "God bless the Prince of Wales."
"Good gracious, no!" Miss Mazerod replied; and both young ladies stood up to curtsey to the Royal party.
It was the great artistic _soirée_ of the year, and crowds of nobodies jostled each other in their mad desire to deceive whosoever might be credulous into the belief that they were somebodies.
"Of course," said Dora, when they were seated again, and the strains of the Welsh air had been suppressed "by desire," "they may be very great swells; I have no doubt they are in their particular way; but they do not look it."
"Some of them," she said, "are frame-makers, a good many of them, with big bills in high places. Others are actresses--very great actresses off the stage. Do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious expression which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid scorning a milkman's love on the area steps? She is a great actress, who will not take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. She is an actress 'pour se faire photographier.'"
"And this is the cream of London society?" said Dora, looking round her with considerable amusement.