"Frip was not very wise to repeat things. But why should you have said what was not correct?"
"I thought it was—of course! How could I know?"
"It would have been kinder to Bee to find out."
That was all that passed; but Magda was much disturbed. It had never crossed her mind that what she did might come to Bee's knowledge.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
SOMEBODY'S LOOSE ENDS
FOR a fortnight past—ever since Ivor's departure—those "loose ends" had been very apparent. Magda had dropped into a state of hopeless inertia. There was energy enough in her constitution, when it was aroused by a sufficient stimulus; but, like many strong and energetic people, she could be unspeakably lazy. And that was her present condition.
Everything seemed dull and stupid, "stale, flat and unprofitable." Work went to the wall. All that she cared to do was to sit before the fire, reading or pretending to read novels, and going over in imagination those two delightful evenings, which had somehow demoralised her, making nothing else in life worth consideration.
She had fallen back into her usual standing of a "nobody;" and she could not see why it must be so. Other girls were made much of, admired, put forward. Why should it not be the same with herself? She had found that—given certain conditions—it was in her power to be taking. She wanted those conditions to recur. If only Mr. Ivor would pay another visit to the Vicarage, she might again enjoy that delightful sense of power. There was nobody now in the place for whom she cared or who cared for her.
So she made herself far from agreeable to her home-folks, for whom in reality she cared very much; only, a cyclone was needed to reveal the fact. She forgot what she had to do, and refused what she was asked, and replied snappishly, and resented being found fault with, and behaved altogether like a querulous child.