"You need not look--as if I would try to detain you, Elinor."
"Do you think I am afraid of your detaining me? I thought I should be sure to meet you to-night, and was on the outlook. How is it that we never see you now?"
He refused the natural retort that she had never asked to see him, and only said, with a smile, "I hear my aunt is gone."
"Do you mean to say that you only came for her? That is an unkind speech. Yes, she has gone. It was cruel to keep her in town for the best part of the year."
"But she intended to stay till July, Elinor."
"Did she? I think you are mistaken, John. She intended to watch over me--dear mamma, she thinks too much of me--but when she saw that I was quite well----"
"You don't look to me so extraordinarily well."
"Don't I? I must be a fraud then. Nobody could be stronger. I'm going to a multitude of places to-night. Wherever my Hebrew leader goes I go," said Elinor, with a laugh. "I have given myself up for to-night, and she is never satisfied with less than a dozen."
"Oh, half an hour at least: and with having our carriage found for us at every place, and the risk of getting into a _queue_, and all the delays of coming and going, it cannot be much less than three-quarters of an hour. This is the third. I think three more will weary even the Jew."
"You are with Lady Mariamne then, Elinor?"
"Yes--oh, you need not make that face. She is as good as the rest, and pretends to nothing, at least. I have no carriage, you know, and Phil took fright at my dear old fly. He thought a hired brougham was not good when I was alone."
"That was quite true. Nevertheless, I should like above all things to keep you here a little longer to look at some of the pictures, and take you home in a hansom after."
She laughed. "Oh, so should I--fancy, I have not seen the pictures, not at all. We came in a mob to the private view; and then one day I was coming with mamma, but was stopped by something, and now---- Always people, people--nothing else. 'Did you see So-and-so? There's some one bowing to you, Nell. Be sure you speak a word to the Thises or the Thats'--while I don't care for one of them. But I fear the hansom would not do, John."
"It would have done very well in the old days. Your mother would not have been displeased."