I daresay we might have passed in the street and never known it—I’m sure I must be horribly changed…”
Thus Bessy discoursed, in the semi-isolation to which, under an overarching beech-tree, the discretion of their hostess had allowed the two friends to withdraw for the freer exchange of confidences. There was, at first sight, nothing in her aspect to bear out Mrs. Amherst’s plaintive allusion to her health, but Justine, who knew that she had lost a baby a few months previously, assumed that the effect of this shock still lingered, though evidently mitigated by a reviving interest in pretty clothes and the other ornamental accessories of life. Certainly Bessy Amherst had grown into the full loveliness which her childhood promised. She had the kind of finished prettiness that declares itself early, holds its own through the awkward transitions of girlhood, and resists the strain of all later vicissitudes, as though miraculously preserved in some clear medium impenetrable to the wear and tear of living.
“You absurd child! You’ve not changed a bit except to grow more so!" Justine laughed, paying amused tribute to the childish craving for “a compliment” that still betrayed itself in Bessy’s eyes.
“Well, you have, then, Justine—you’ve grown extraordinarily handsome!”
“That is extraordinary of me, certainly,” the other
acknowledged gaily. “But then think what room for
[ 168 ]
