Though Aunt Cathie had joined in the French lessons, and had beaten time (except for the Tschaikowsky), and had shown Lucia many "touches" in the matter of sketching, she felt dumbly and barrenly that there was a part of Lucia that she had never been given admittance to. That sense was with her now. Though Lucia gave an excellent reason for this tiny adjustment of her own affairs, she felt that she was silently making another adjustment, and silently planning something further. But Lucia's silence, which was the main cause of this imaginative effort on Aunt Cathie's part, was soon broken, and, as if with a weight removed, she became herself again.
"Ah! it will be heavenly," she said; "and I love to think of the cool sea and the fresh winds on this sort of morning. I must go into the town after breakfast, and tell them to send my bathing-dress at once. I only said I should want one; now I must have it. And, Aunt Cathie, wouldn't it be nice to have a little tent of our own on the beach? I saw one yesterday in Tompkinson's, quite nice and quite cheap. We might put it up on the lawn here, too, and at your garden-parties you might have tea and ices in it. It was only two pounds; do let me give half, and it will be yours and mine. It was quite waterproof, the man said; if it proved not to be, he would take it back. Besides, if we jmt up our own tent on the beach, it will save a shilling each time we bathe. If we are there a month, do you see, there is thirty shillings off the two pounds instantly. Fancy getting a waterproof tent for ten shillings: that is what it comes to."
But Lucia revolved many things when she started on her bicycle after breakfast to conclude matters with Mr. Tompkinson. In especial, this premature and pre-dated departure from Littlestone vexed her. She had contemplated another fortnight more of what should be a dull August for Lord Brayton, and she knew she would have behaved differently when he lunched with them, if she had thought that that was to be their last meeting for a month or more. In September he was going to Scotland, and she had certainly meant to bring matters to a crisis, if possible, before he went there. She had conducted the affair of the lunch as if they were going to meet again before long, and though she had done a certain amount of quiet fine work on that occasion, she would, so she felt now, have done more, if she had known that she was making ultimate speeches instead of penultimate. She would have given the impression of even greater perception than she had done; she would have given (or rather
