“Janey! Oh, Janey!” she cried, “Listen! This is too extraordinary. There is the young lady in black!”
Janey, as may be supposed, had heard every detail of Mrs. Copperhead’s ball, and knew what Ursula meant as well as Ursula herself did. She grew pale with excitement and curiosity. “No!” she said, “you can’t mean it. Are you sure, are you quite sure? Two new people in one day! Why, everybody must be coming to Carlingford. It makes me feel quite strange!” said this susceptible young woman; “the young lady in black!”
“Oh, yes, there can’t be any mistake,” said Ursula, hurrying on in her excitement, “I looked at her so much. I couldn’t mistake her. Oh, I wonder if she will know me, I wonder if she will speak to me! or if she is going to see the Dorsets, or what has brought her to Carlingford. Only fancy, Janey, the young lady in black whom I have talked so much of; oh, I wonder, I do wonder what has brought her here.”
They were on the opposite side of the lane, so that their hurried approach did not startle the strangers; but Phoebe, looking up at the sound of the footsteps, saw a face she knew looking wistfully, eagerly at her, with evident recognition. Phoebe had a faculty quite royal of remembering faces, and it took but a moment to recall Ursula’s to her. Another moment was spent in a rapid discussion with herself, as to whether she should give or withhold the salutation which the girl evidently sought. But what harm could it do? and it would be pleasant to know someone; and if on finding out who she was, Miss Dorset’s little relation shrank from her acquaintance, why then, Phoebe said to herself, “I shall be no worse than before.” So she sent a smile and a bow across the road and said, “How do you do?” in a pause of her conversation. Ursula was too shy to feel on equal terms with the young lady in black, who was so much more self-possessed than she was. She blushed and smiled, answered, “Quite well, thank you,” across the lane like a child, and notwithstanding a great many pokes from Janey’s energetic elbow, went on without further response.
“Oh, why can’t you run across and speak to her?” cried Janey, “oh, how funny you are, and how disagreeable! would I pass anyone I knew, like that!”
“You don’t understand, you are only a child,” said Ursula, frightened and agitated, yet full of dignity, “we have only met—in society. When you are introduced to anyone in society it does not count. Perhaps they might not want to know you; perhaps—but anyhow you can’t rush up to them like two girls at school. You have to wait and see what they will do.”
“Well, I declare!” cried Janey; “then what is the good of society? You know them, and yet you mustn’t know them. I would never be such a fool as that. Fancy looking at her across the lane and saying ‘quite well, thank you,’ after she had begun to speak. I suppose that’s Cousin Anne’s way? I should have rushed across and asked where she was staying, and when she would come to see us. Ursula, oh,” cried Janey, suddenly changing her tone, and looking at her sister with eyes which had widened to twice their natural size with the grandeur of the idea, “you will have to ask her to tea!”
“Oh, you silly girl, do you think she would come? you should have seen her at the ball. She knew everybody, and had such quantities of partners. Mr. Clarence Copperhead was always dancing with her. Fancy her coming to tea with us.” But Ursula herself was somewhat breathless with the suggestion. When a thing has been once said, there is always a chance that it may be done, and the two girls walked up very quickly into the High Street after this, silent, with a certain awe of themselves and their possibilities. It might be done, now that it had been said.
XV
A Domestic Crisis
The interest shown by the two girls in the stranger whom they had noted with so much attention was not destined to meet with any immediate reward. Neither he, nor “the young lady in black,” whom he hurried across the street to meet, could be heard of, or was seen for full two days afterwards, to the great disappointment of the young Mays. Ursula, especially, who had been entertaining vague but dazzling thoughts of a companionship more interesting than Janey’s, more novel and at the same time more equal than that which was extended to her by the Miss Griffiths in Grange Lane, who were so much better off and had so much less to do than she. Ursula did not recollect the name of the fortunate girl who was so much in the ascendant at Mr. Copperhead’s ball, though Phoebe had been introduced to her; but she did recollect her popularity and general friendliness, and the number of partners she had, and all those delightful signs of greatness which impress a poor little stranger, to whom her first dance is not unmingled pleasure. She whispered to Janey about her even in the drawing-room when all the family were assembled.
“Do you think she will call?” said Ursula, asking counsel even of Janey’s inexperience, of which she was so contemptuous on other occasions.
“Call! how can she, if she is a stranger?” said Janey.
“As if you knew anything about it!” Ursula retorted with great injustice.
“If I don’t know, then why do you ask me?” complained Janey with reason. The room looked more
