"You had a good day, I hope," she said.
"It was wonderful," exclaimed Dennis Brown. "We didn't make any money except Miranda. But that didn't matter."
"All our horses were down the course," Harold Jupp explained. "They weren't running in their form at all"; and he added cheerfully: "But the war may be over before the winter, and then we'll go chasing and get it all back."
Millicent Splay rang for tea, just as Joan Whitworth came into the hall.
"You didn't see Colonel Luttrell then?" asked Lady Splay.
"No."
"He'll come down later then." She had an eye for Joan Whitworth as she spoke, but Joan was so utterly indifferent as to whether Colonel Luttrell would arrive or not that she could not stifle a sigh. She had gathered Luttrell into the party with some effort and now it seemed her effort was to be fruitless. Joan persisted in her mood of austere contempt for the foibles of the world. She was dressed in a gown of an indeterminate shade between drab and sage-green, which did its best to annul her. She had even come to sandals. There they were now sticking out beneath the abominable gown.
"She can't ruin her complexion," thought Millicent Splay. "That's one thing. But if she could, she would. Oh, I would love to smack her!"
Joan, quite unaware of Millie Splay's tingling fingers and indignant eyes, sat reading "Ferishtah's Fancies." Other girls might set their caps at the soldiers. Joan had got to be different. She had even dallied with the pacifists. Martin Hillyard had carried away so close a recollection of her on that afternoon when she had driven him through the golden sunset over Duncton Hill and of the brave words she had then spoken that he had to force himself to realise that this was indeed she.
Millicent Splay had three preoccupations that afternoon but none pressed upon her with so heavy a load of anxiety as her preoccupation concerning Joan Whitworth.