The slight jest was made popular amongst her seniors, and Alex was kindly rallied about her modern freedom and assumption of privileges undreamed of by the older generation. The inference obviously placed upon her friendship with Noel Cardew was evident, and pleased her starved vanity even more than the agreeable amount of flattery and attention which at last was being bestowed upon her.
It was her first hint of success achieved amid standards which she had been taught to believe were all-prevalent. Brushed lightly by the passing wing of triumph, she became eager and self-confident, even rather over-clamorous in the assertion of her own individuality, as had been the child Alex in the nursery at Clevedon Square.
Lady Isabel did not check her. She made subtle exploitation of Alex' youth and sudden, rather boisterous gaiety, and occasionally laughed a little, and alluded to the collaboration scheme between her and Noel Cardew. "But all the same, darlin' child," she observed to Alex in private, "I can't have you correspondin' with young men all over the country unbeknown to me. Once in a way is all very well, perhaps, but you'll have to let me see the letters, I think."
Alex was only mildly resentful of the injunction. She surmised shrewdly enough that her mother was more anxious to establish the authentic existence of a correspondence between Noel Cardew and herself than to supervise the details of it. She herself waited with frantic, furtive eagerness for his first letter.
It did not reach her until after her return to London. Secretly bitterly disappointed, she read the short, conventional phrases and the subscription:
"I never know how to end up a letter, but hope this will be all right--Yours very sincerely,
Across the top of the front page was a postscript.
"Next month I shall be in town. Don't forget that I am coming to call upon you. I hope you won't be 'out'!"
Alex, to whom nothing was trivial, saw the proposed call looming enormous upon the horizon of her days.
Every afternoon she either sat beside Lady Isabel in the carriage in an agony, with only one thought in her mind--the expectation of finding Noel's card upon the hall table on their return--or else took her part disjointedly and with obvious absent-mindedness in the entertainment of her mother's visitors.