It did not end Aura's ordeal, however, for, once in the drawing-room, Lady Smith-Biggs begged to be introduced in form.
"Oh! I am sorry," said Aura innocently, reaching up to the good lady's outstretched waggling hand; "but I always shake hands lower down. Is that the right way?"
The question verged on the impossible, since Lady Smith-Biggs lived in the highest circles. But she ignored it, and all her good breeding did not prevent her descending on the girl with a perfect cataract of questions. Where did she live, who was her father, had she any brothers or sisters?
"No!" she replied shortly; then fearing she had been too incisive, added, "I have often wished I had. I should have liked them."
Helen Tressilian coming to the rescue looked at her with soft approving eyes. "They would have liked you, I'm sure. I expect you are very fond of children."
The girl turned to her impulsively. "Yes--very! You don't know how often I've wished that I had a baby."
It was worse than the sixpence. Lady Smith-Biggs gasped.
Her matronly breast heaved. She cast a nervous glance towards her daughter, who was providentially occupied in looking at Miss Vyvyan's lace-work.
"My dear," she said majestically, "you haven't a mother, so you'll excuse me telling you that we don't say that sort of thing in society."
"Why not?" she asked, and her voice had a militant ring in it.
"O Ned, Ned!" whispered Helen Tressilian to her cousin, as at that moment the gentleman entered the room, "for Heaven's sake take her away from us soon or she will be spoilt!"
He grasped the situation in a moment. "I'm afraid we must be starting, Miss Graham. We are going to row you across the estuary, and then we can walk home over the hills. You have never been in a boat, have you?"
"No!" said poor Aura, suddenly feeling inclined to cry. It seemed to her as if she knew nothing and had seen nothing.
Peter Ramsay had come down to spend the Christmas holidays at Plas Afon in a very bad temper, both with himself and his world.
He was perfectly aware that he had been over-hasty in his struggle with vested interests, but what irritated him most of all was the knowledge that he had, as it were, cut the ground from under his own feet, so that further fighting was impossible. He could, of course, go over to Vienna, and learn a great deal under Pagenheim; but he would only have to come home again and begin where he had left off; which was silly--intensely silly! There are few things more annoying than the knowledge that you have given yourself away needlessly, and that a very slight application of a drag might have prevented the apple-cart from being overturned. The whole affair seemed now almost childish in its crudity. What the deuce did it matter whether a hogshead or a pint of beer were drunk, or if one patient the more died, instead of living to die in due time of something worse!