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'Ask away, cried Bessie, cheerfully; 'I can't give you the moon, but anything which I really do possess is yours this instant. 'Don't let us ever talk of Brian Walford. I can never get over the feeling of humiliation which Miss Rylance's practical joke caused me; and my only chance of forgetting it is to forget your cousin's existence.
'I have quite forgiven Bess her share of the joke, answered Ida, scanning Miss Rylance's smiling countenance with dark, scornful eyes, 'because I know she had no idea of giving me pain. 'But won't you forgive me too? Are you going to leave me out in the cold? 'I don't think you care a straw whether I forgive or do not forgive you.
Ida had not yet upbraided her for the trick of which she was the author and originator, but Urania was in no wise grateful for this forbearance. She had acted with deliberate maliciousness; and she wanted to know that her malice had given pain. The whole thing was a failure if it had not hurt the girl who had been audacious enough to outshine Miss Rylance, and to fascinate Miss Rylance's father.
Among the parents of existing pupils who had accepted the Misses Pew's invitation was Dr. Rylance, the fashionable physician, whose presence there conferred distinction upon the school. It was Miss Rylance's last term, and the doctor wished to assist at those honours which she would doubtless reap as the reward of meritorious studies.
'I always meant to marry for money, if ever such wonderful fortune as a rich husband fell in my way. And yet she had refused Dr. Rylance's offer, without a moment's hesitation. Was it really as he had said, in the bitterness of his wrath, because the offer was not good enough, the temptation not large enough?
The wagonette with its scratch team and a couple of smart grooms, was at the Homestead gate at ten o'clock, and after picking up Miss Wendover and her companion, went on to The Knoll for Bessie and Blanche, and then to Dr. Rylance's for Urania, who had accepted the invitation most graciously.
On New Year's Eve Miss Wendover gave one of her famous dinner-parties; famous because it was always said that her dinners were, on their scale, better than anybody else's yea, even that Dr. Rylance's, although that gentleman spared no expense, and had been known to induce the French cook from the Dolphin at Southampton to come over and prepare the feast for him.
Ida and Bessie were handed to their places by Horatio, the chubby Eva scrambled into her seat, with a liberal display of Oxford blue stocking, under the shortest of striped petticoats; and off they drove to the cottage, Dr. Rylance's miniature dwelling, where the plate-glass windows were shining in the morning sun, and the colours of the flower-beds were almost too bright to be looked at.
This was Dr. Mallison, of Harley Street, a great authority in all nervous disorders as thorough and as real a man as Dr. Rylance was artificial and shallow, yet a, man whom some of Dr. Rylance's most profitable patients denounced as a brute. Dr.
Rylance was never more cheerful than when driving her to Waterloo Station. Miss Rylance's life, therefore, during this period alternated between rural seclusion and London gaiety.
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