"Where have you been?"
"We went to Derby to see a friend of my father's."
"Who?"
It was an adventure to her to put direct questions and get
plain answers. She knew she might do it with this man.
"Why, he is a clergyman too--he is my guardian--one
of them."
Ursula knew that Skrebensky was an orphan.
"Where is really your home now?" she asked.
"My home?--I wonder. I am very fond of my
colonel--Colonel Hepburn: then there are my aunts: but my
real home, I suppose, is the army."
"Do you like being on your own?"
His clear, greenish-grey eyes rested on her a moment, and, as
he considered, he did not see her.
"I suppose so," he said. "You see my father--well, he
was never acclimatized here. He wanted--I don't know what
he wanted--but it was a strain. And my mother--I
always knew she was too good to me. I could feel her being too
good to me--my mother! Then I went away to school so early.
And I must say, the outside world was always more naturally a
home to me than the vicarage--I don't know why."
"Do you feel like a bird blown out of its own latitude?" she
asked, using a phrase she had met.
"No, no. I find everything very much as I like it."
He seemed more and more to give her a sense of the vast
world, a sense of distances and large masses of humanity. It
drew her as a scent draws a bee from afar. But also it hurt
her.
It was summer, and she wore cotton frocks. The third time he
saw her she had on a dress with fine blue-and-white stripes,
with a white collar, and a large white hat. It suited her
golden, warm complexion.
"I like you best in that dress," he said, standing with his
head slightly on one side, and appreciating her in a perceiving,
critical fashion.
She was thrilled with a new life. For the first time she was
in love with a vision of herself: she saw as it were a fine
little reflection of herself in his eyes. And she must act up to
this: she must be beautiful. Her thoughts turned swiftly to
clothes, her passion was to make a beautiful appearance. Her
family looked on in amazement at the sudden transformation of
Ursula. She became elegant, really elegant, in figured cotton
frocks she made for herself, and hats she bent to her fancy. An
inspiration was upon her.
He sat with a sort of languor in her grandmother's rocking
chair, rocking slowly, languidly, backward and forward, as
Ursula talked to him.
"You are not poor, are you?" she said.
"Poor in money? I have about a hundred and fifty a year of my
own--so I am poor or rich, as you like. I am poor enough,
in fact."