"Oh! we talk a good deal, though we understand one another, I hope. I only meant that there was no one else to talk to, and that one could have so much silence as not to care much about it."
Lady Angela made her feel immature and irritable; and could the shrinking irritability be simply--she asked it of herself with quite a pang of self-disgust--a latent sense of contrast, of jealousy? But it was prior to, deeper than, any possible jealousy; she could exonerate herself from the pettiness, though wondering if the deeper cause were more creditable. What creditable cause could there be for disliking Lady Angela, so exquisite, so tender, holding her hand so closely within hers as they walked? Yet she knew that she wanted, like a rude child, to push her away; and though that rudimentary instinct must be controlled, her eye in going over her went with something of a child's large coldness.
Angela wore, on the hot summer afternoon, a trailing dress of white. A scarf of gauze and lace fell from her shoulders to her feet. Her arms and breast glimmered through dim old laces. Enfolded as she was with transparent whiteness, she looked exquisitely undressed--a wan Aphrodite rising through faint foam. Ridiculous, indeed, Felicia thought, that this spiritual creature should arouse in her a Puritanic rigour, so that she was glad of the crisp creak of her own linen frock, stiff with much laundering, quite badly cut, she unregretfully knew--a frock simply, and in no sense an ornament. She was glad that she had not put on her better dress, the white lawn, with its flutter and its charm. Let the contrast be as obvious as possible--as unbecoming to herself as possible.
"You must let me come and see you on your hill-top some day when I am here again," Angela went on; "may I? I can't tell you how people interest me. I have always loved to look at other people's lives--haven't I, Maurice?" Geoffrey walked a little apart, smoking; none of her pretty appeals included him.
"To meddle as well as look, you think--don't you?" and her smile was now half sad in its humour.
"Oh, you meddle quite nicely," Maurice said; "Let her meddle with you, Miss Merrick, if she longs to; it will give her lots of pleasure and do you no harm."