Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/341

 Rh then they would go together in search of suitable lodgings. The looking out for lodgings could be done in the afternoon, as their nature would be determined by the amount of income on which Saltren could reckon.

"I suppose," he said, "that my uncle can help me into getting the composition of a leader every alternate day as a beginning, and if I get five guineas for a leader, that will make fifteen in the week. Then, I suppose, I can do reviewing, and write for magazines, and make about thirty pounds a week, that will be, say fifteen hundred a year, as a beginning. I have reckoned the year as one of fifty instead of fifty-two weeks, because I shall have to allow myself a short holiday. On fifteen hundred a year we ought to have a nice villa residence, with garden and conservatories. What do you say to a Queen Anne house at Turnham Green? I, myself, rather incline to Chislehurst."

When he was gone, Arminell, left to herself, had returned to her bedroom, to find it not ready for her. So she went downstairs again, and sat by the window in the coffee-room, looking into the street through the wire-gauze blind, not thinking of and interested in what passed in the street, but turning in mind to Orleigh, to her pretty chamber there; to the breakfast room, with the windows to the east, and the sun flooding it; to the table with its silver, and flowers, and porcelain. How small everything in this inn was, and how lacking in freshness and grace!

Her father's cheery face had been a feature at the meal, as was also her step-mother, fresh, gentle, pale, and dove-like in movement and tone. She remembered these things now that she had cast them from her, and found that they had been pleasant, and were not to be recalled without a beating of the pulse, and a rising in the throat.

Two gentlemen were at breakfast at a table near her, and were eating eggs—London eggs—and the savour of eggs, especially London eggs, in a low room is not agreeable.