"Why, Rosamond! Really, my love. I am afraid, my love, that Aspasia is right, that you are not well. This is the second time in twenty-four hours that you have answered me in this—in really, what I may call—quite with temper, in fact. I'm afraid, dear, that you cannot be well. I shall certainly request Saunders to look in this evening."
Lady Gerardine fell back upon her pillow, and then, lifting the heavy mass of her hair, swept it across her face like a sheltering wing, as if, even in the dim room, she could not endure the gaze of human eyes upon her. Sir Arthur, for all his science of life, could not but own to himself that he was nonplussed. He shrugged his shoulders. Fortunately, sensible men were not expected to understand the whims of the charming but irresponsible sex. Rosamond was evidently not the thing, and therefore was to be indulgently excused. In spite of which philosophic conclusion his attitude towards his secretaries and other subordinates that morning was marked with unwonted asperity.
"Something's turned our seraphic old ass a trifle sour," Mr. George Murray remarked to his junior, with a grin.
* * * * *
Under the veil of her hair Rosamond would have called, if she could, on all the shades of the world to come and cover her; would have gladly sunk under them, away from the light of life and the pain of living, somewhere where all would be dark and all quiet, where she might be forgotten—and allowed to forget.
CHAPTER VIII
"Jani," said her mistress, "bring me Captain English's box!"
The ayah stared as if she could not have heard aright. There followed a strange oppressive silence, in which the lapping of the waters in the inner marble spaces seemed to take whispering voices of amazement. Then Lady Gerardine, standing straight and impassive by her dressing-table, her head just turned aside from the reflection of her own beauty, repeated her order in the same hard, uninflected tone.
"Captain English's box; bring it to me."
Jani looked sharply up at the speaker's face and clapped her hands together with the wail of the children of her race when sudden trouble comes upon them.