Part 32 (1/2)

Barbara looked at her sister, with her eyebrows c.o.c.ked in a provoking, conceited sort of way, not angrily, but rather contemptuously.

”Really, Alex, to hear you make such a fuss about it, any one would think that you'd never set eyes on a man. Of course, that sort of thing happens as soon as one begins to get grown-up. It's part of the fun.”

”You know mother would say it was vulgar.”

It was almost a relief to see one of Barbara's rare blushes at the word.

”I don't see why it should be more vulgar than you and Noel.”

”How can you be so ridiculous! Of course, that was quite different. We were both grown-up, and properly engaged and everything.”

”Alex,” said Barbara suddenly, ”when you were engaged, did he ever kiss you?”

Alex turned nearly as scarlet as her sister had been a moment before.

”Shut up!” she said savagely. A thought struck her. ”You don't mean to say you ever let that beastly French boy try to do anything like that?”

she demanded.

”No, no,” said Barbara hastily; ”of course not. But he's not such a boy as all that, you know. He has a moustache, and he's doing his _service militaire_ now. Otherwise,” said Barbara calmly, ”I daresay he would have followed me to England.”

”You conceited little idiot! He must have been laughing at you.”

Barbara shrugged her shoulders, with a gesture that had certainly not been acquired in Clevedon Square.

”You'll see for yourself presently,” she remarked. ”He's going to get his _permission_ next month, and he's coming to London.”

”You don't suppose you'll be able to go sneaking about writing notes and meeting him in corners _here_, do you?” cried Alex, horrified.

Barbara looked at her disdainfully, and gave deft little pulls and pats to the bow on her hair, so that it stood out more than ever.

”What on earth do you take me for, Alex? Of course, I know as well as you do that that sort of thing can't be done in London. It will all be perfectly proper,” said Barbara superbly. ”I have given him permission to call here.”

Alex remained speechless.

She was quite unable to share in the tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt with which her parents apparently viewed the astonis.h.i.+ng emanc.i.p.ation of Barbara, although it was true that Barbara still retained a sufficient sense of decorum to describe M. Achille de Villefranche to them merely as ”a cousin of Helene's, who would like to come and call when he is in London.”

Lady Isabel acceded to the proposed visit with gracious amus.e.m.e.nt, and Alex wondered jealously why her own attempts to prove grown-up and like other girls never seemed to succeed as did Barbara's preposterous, demurely-spoken pretensions--until she remembered with a pang that, after all, _she_ had never had to ask whether admiring strangers might call upon her. She knew instinctively that however much Lady Isabel might exact in the way of elaborate chaperonage, she would secretly have welcomed any such proof of her daughter's attraction for members of the opposite s.e.x.

One day Barbara, more boastful or less secretive than usual, showed Alex one of Achille's notes, written to her on the day that she had left Neuilly.

Alex deciphered the pointed writing with some difficulty, and then turned first hot and then cold, as she remembered the few letters she had ever received from Noel Cardew, written during the period of their lawful, sanctioned engagement, when she had so fiercely told herself that, of course, a man was never romantic on paper, and that his very reticence only proved the depth of his feeling.

And all that time Barbara, utterly cold and merely superciliously amused, had been the recipient of this Latin hyperbole, these impa.s.sioned poetical flights:

”_Ma pet.i.te rose blanche anglaise_ _Ma douce Sainte Barbe._”

(Good Heavens! he had never seen Barbara in one of her cold furies, when she would sulk in perfect silence for three days on end!) And finally, with humble pleadings that he might be forgiven for such a _debordement_, Achille apostrophized her as ”_ma mignonne adorer._”

Alex could hardly believe that it was really Barbara who had inspired these romantic ebullitions.

”How did you answer him?” she asked breathlessly.