Her interest
in the prospective pleasures on which Lady Halifax
expatiated was slight; she was obliged to speculate upon
its rising, which she did with all the confidence she
could command. She declined absolutely to read Bryce's
"American Commonwealth," or Miss Bird's account of the
Rocky Mountains, or anybody's travels in the Orient, upon
all of which Miss Halifax had painstakingly fixed her
attention; but one afternoon she ordered a blue serge
travelling-dress and refused one or two literary,
engagements for the present, and the next day wrote to
Lady Halifax that she had decided to go. Her father
received her decision with more relief than he meant to
show, and Janet had a bitter half-hour over it. Then
she plunged with energy into her arrangements, and
Lawrence, Cardiff made her inconsistently happy again
with the interest he took in them, supplemented by an
extremely dainty little travelling-clock. He became
suddenly so solicitous for her that she sometimes quivered
before the idea that he guessed all the reasons that were
putting her to flight, which gave her a wholly unnecessary
pang, for nothing would have astonished Lawrence Cardiff
more than to be confronted, at the moment, with any
passion that was not his own.
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