IT did not happen until three days later that Thorpe's opportunity to speak alone with Lady Cressage came.
In this brief period, the two parties seemed to have become fused in a remarkable intimacy. This was clearly due to the presence of the young people, and Thorpe congratulated himself many times each day upon the striking prescience he had shown in bringing them.
Both the ladies unaffectedly liked Julia; so much so that they seemed unwilling to make any plans which did not include her. Then it was only a matter of course that where she went her brother should go--and a further logical step quite naturally brought in their willing uncle.
If he had planned everything, and now was ordering everything, it could not have gone more to his liking.
Certain side speculations lent a savour to the satisfaction with which he viewed this state of affairs. He found many little signs to confirm the suspicion that the two ladies had been the readier to make much of Julia because they were not overkeen about each other's society. The bright, sweet-natured girl had come as a welcome diversion to a couple who in seclusion did battle with tendencies to yawn. He was not quite convinced, for that matter, that the American lady always went to that trouble.
She seemed to his observation a wilful sort of person, who would not be restrained by small ordinary considerations from doing the things she wanted to do. Her relations with her companion afforded him food for much thought.
Without any overt demonstrations, she produced the effect of ordering Lady Cressage about. This, so far as it went, tended to prejudice him against her.
On the other hand, however, she was so good to Julia, in a peculiarly frank and buoyant way which fascinated the girl, that he could not but like her. And she was very good to Alfred too.
There was, indeed, he perceived, a great deal of individuality about the friendship which had sprung up between Miss Madden and his nephew. She was years his senior--he settled it with himself that the American could not be less than seven-and-twenty,--yet Alfred stole covert glances of admiration at her, and seemed to think of nothing but opportunities for being in her company as if--as if--Thorpe hardly liked to complete the comparison in his own thoughts. Alfred, of course, said it was all on account of her wonderful hair; he rather went out of his way to dilate upon the enthusiasm her "colour scheme"--whatever that might mean--excited in him as an artist. The uncle had moments of profound skepticism about this--moments when he uneasily wondered whether it was not going to be his duty to speak to the young man.
For the most part, however, he extracted reassurance from Miss Madden's demeanour toward the lad. She knew, it seemed, a vast deal about pictures; at least she was able to talk a vast deal about them, and she did it in such a calmly dogmatic fashion, laying down the law always, that she put Alfred in the position of listening as a pupil might listen to a master. The humility with which his nephew accepted this position annoyed Thorpe upon occasion, but he reasoned that it was a fault on the right side.
Very likely it would help to keep the fact of the lady's seniority more clearly before the youngster's mind, and that would be so much gained.
And these apprehensions, after all, were scarcely to be counted in the balance against the sense of achieved happiness with which these halcyon days kept Thorpe filled.
The initiatory dinner had gone off perfectly. He could have wished, indeed, that Julia had a smarter frock, and more rings, when he saw the imposing costumes and jewelled throats and hands of his guests--but she was a young girl, by comparison, he reflected, and there could be no doubt that they found her charming. As for Alfred, he was notably fine-looking in his evening-clothes--infinitely more like the son of a nobleman, the gratified uncle kept saying to himself, than that big dullard, the Honourable Balder.
It filled him with a new pleasure to remember that Alfred had visiting cards presenting his name as D'Aubigny, which everybody of education knew was what the degenerate Dabney really stood for. The lad and his sister had united upon this excellent change long ago at Cheltenham, and oddly enough they had confessed it to their uncle, at the beginning of the trip, with a show of trepidation, as if they feared his anger. With radiant gayety he had relieved their minds by showing them his card, with "Mr.
Stormont Thorpe" alone upon it. At the dinner table, in the proudest moment of his life, he had made himself prouder still by thinking how distinguished an appearance his and Alfred's cards would make together in the apartment below next day.
But next day, the relations between the two parties had already become too informal for cards. Julia went down to see them; they came up to see Julia. Then they all went for a long walk, with luncheon at Vevey, and before evening Alfred was talking confidently of painting Miss Madden.
Next day they went by train to St. Maurice, and, returning after dark, dined without ceremony together.
This third day--the weather still remaining bright--they had ascended by the funicular road to Glion, and walked on among the swarming luegers, up to Caux. Here, after luncheon, they had wandered about for a time, regarding the panorama of lake and mountains. Now, as the homeward descent began, chance led the two young people and Miss Madden on ahead.
Thorpe found himself walking beside Lady Cressage.
He had upon his arm her outer wrap, which she said she would put on presently. To look at the view he must glance past her face: the profile, under the graceful fur cap, was so enriched by glowing colour that it was, to his thought, as if she were blushing.
"How little I thought, a few months ago," he said, "that we should be mountaineering together!""Oh, no one knows a day ahead," she responded, vaguely.
"I had probably less notion of coming to Switzerland then than you had.""Then you don't come regularly?"
