that she was, in reality, weak and wavering.
Althea's accounts of her friends in England seemed to interest Miss Buchanan even less than her accounts of Bayreuth. She had met Miss Buckston, but had only a vague and, evidently, not a pleasant impression of her. Lady Blair she had never heard of, nor the inmates of Grimshaw Rectory. The Collings were also blanks, except that Mrs. Colling had an uncle, an old Lord Taunton; and when Althea put forward this identifying fact, Helen said that she knew him and liked him very much.
'I suppose you know a great many people,' said Althea.
Yes, Miss Buchanan replied, she supposed she did. 'Too many, sometimes. One gets sick of them, don't you think? But perhaps your people are more interesting than mine; you travel so much, and seem to know such heaps of them all over the world.'
But Althea, from these interviews, took a growing impression that though Miss Buchanan might be sick of her own people, she would be far more sick of hers.
CHAPTER V.
Miss Buchanan was well on the way to complete recovery, was able to have tea every afternoon with Althea, and to be taken for long drives in the Bois, when Aunt Julia and the girls arrived at the Hôtel Talleyrand.
Mrs. Pepperell was a sister of Althea's mother, and lived soberly and solidly in New York, disapproving as much of millionaires and their manners as of expatriated Americans. She was large and dressed with immaculate precision and simplicity, and had it not been for a homespun quality of mingled benevolence and shrewdness, she might have passed as stately. But Mrs. Pepperell had no wish to appear stately, and was rather intolerant of the pretension in others. Her sharp tongue had indulged itself in a good many sallies on this score at her sister Bessie's expense; Bessie being the lady of the lorgnette, Althea's deceased mother.
Althea, remembering that dear mother so well, all dignified elegance as she had been—too dignified, too elegant, perhaps, to be either so shrewd or so benevolent as her sister—always thought of Aunt Julia as rather commonplace in comparison. Yet, as she followed in her wake on the evening of her arrival, she felt that Aunt Julia was obviously and eminently 'nice.' The one old-fashioned diamond ornament at her throat, the ruffles at her wrist, the gloss of her silver-brown hair, reminded her of her own mother's preferences.
The girls were 'nice,' too, as far as their appearance and breeding went, but Althea found their manners very bad. They were not strident and they were not arrogant, but so much noisiness and so much innocent assurance might, to unsympathetic eyes, seem so. They were handsome girls, fresh-skinned, athletic, tall and slender. They wore beautifully simple white lawn dresses, and their shining fair hair was brushed off their foreheads and tied at the back with black bows in a very becoming fashion, though Althea thought the bows too large and the fashion too obviously local.
Helen was in her old place that night, and she smiled at Althea as she and her party took their places at a table larger and at a little distance. She was to come in for coffee after dinner, so that Althea adjourned introductions. Aunt Julia looked sharply and appraisingly at the black figure, and the girls did not look at all. They were filled with young delight and excitement at the prospect of a three weeks' romp in Paris, among dressmakers, tea-parties, and the opera. 'And Herbert Vaughan is here. I've just had a letter from him, forwarded from London,' Dorothy announced, to which Mildred, with glad emphasis, cried 'Bully!'
Althea sighed, crumbled her bread, and looked out of the window resignedly.
'You mustn't talk slang before Cousin Althea,' said Dorothy.
'What Cousin Althea needs is slang,' said Mildred.
'I shan't lack it with you, shall I, Mildred?' Althea returned, with, a rather chilly smile. She knew that Dorothy and Mildred considered her, as they would have put it, 'A back number'; they liked to draw her out and to shock her. She wanted to make it clear that she wasn't shocked, but that she was wearied. At the same time it was true that Mildred and Dorothy made her uncomfortable in subtler ways; she was, perhaps, a little afraid of them, too. They, too, imposed their own standards, and were oppressed and enlightened by none.
Aunt Julia smiled indulgently at her children, and asked Althea if she did not think that they were looking very well. They certainly were, and Althea had to own it. 'But don't let them overdo their athletics, Aunt Julia,' she said. 'It is such a pity when girls get brawny.'
'I'm brawny; feel my muscle,' said Mildred, stretching a hard young arm across the table. Althea shook her head. She did not like being made conspicuous, and already the girls' loud voices had drawn attention; the French family were all staring.
'Who is the lady in black, Althea?' Mrs. Pepperell asked. 'A friend of yours?'
'Yes, a most charming friend,' said Althea. 'Helen Buchanan is her name; she is Scotch—a very old family—and she is one of the most interesting people I've ever known. You will meet her after dinner. She is coming in to spend the evening.'
'Where did you meet her? How long have you known her?' asked Aunt Julia, evidently unimpressed.
Althea said that she had met her here, but that they had mutual friends, thinking of Miss Buckston in what she felt to be an emergency.
Aunt Julia, with her air of general scepticism as to what she could find so worth while in Europe, often made her embark on definitions and declarations. She could certainly tolerate no uncertainty on the subject of Helen's worth.
'Very odd looking,' said Aunt Julia, while the girls glanced round indifferently at the subject of discussion.
'And peculiarly distinguished looking,' said Althea. 'She makes most people look so half-baked and insignificant.'
'I think it a rather sinister face,' said Aunt Julia. 'And how she slouches! Sit up, Mildred. I don't want you to catch European tricks.'
But, after dinner, Althea felt that Helen made her impression. She was still wan and weak; she said very little, though she smiled very pleasantly, and she sat—as Aunt Julia had said, 'slouched,' yet so gracefully—in a corner of the sofa. The charm worked. The girls felt it, Aunt Julia felt it, though Aunt Julia held aloof from it. Althea saw that Aunt Julia, most certainly, did not interest Helen, but the girls amused her; she liked them. They sat near her and made her laugh by their accounts of their journey, the funny people on the steamer, their plans for the summer, and life in America, as they lived it. Dorothy assured her that she didn't know what fun was till she came to America, and Mildred cried: 'Oh, do come! We'll give you the time of your life!' Helen declared that she hoped some day to experience this climax.
Before going to bed, and attired in her dressing-gown, Althea went to Helen's room to ask her how she felt, but also to see what impression her relatives had made. Helen was languidly brushing her hair, and Althea took the brush from her and brushed it for her.
'Isn't it lamentable,' she said, 'that Aunt Julia, who is full of a certain sort of wise perception about other things, doesn't seem to see at all how bad the children's manners are. She lets them monopolise everybody's attention with the utmost complacency.'
Helen, while her hair was being brushed, put out her hand for her watch and was winding it. 'Have they bad manners?' she said. 'But they are nice girls.'
'Yes, they are nice. But surely you don't like their slang?'
Helen
