Her mother did not answer—she could not. Tears rose in her blue eyes. She had enormous capacity for being hurt. Strangely enough, there was something in her that drove those she loved to say exactly the thing that would hurt her most. It had always been so with her husband, and now it was so with her children.
A misplaced fortitude always led her to hide the fact that she was hurt.
She said now with false gayety, "Well, my dear, I hope some day you will find someone who loves you even better than I do, then."
"I'm sure I hope so," said Dolly, turning the page.
Her manner suggested that if she could not do that much her life would indeed be a failure.
Mrs. Conway stepped out on the piazza. That was the way—you gave up your life to making your children happy, to shielding them from grief and anxiety, and then they blamed you and hurt you horribly for something that was not at all your fault. She felt a moment of resentment toward her brother. Why had Anthony insisted on this silly plan? She had been too considerate of Anthony's feelings; she ought to have refused to have a governess at all. It was much wiser in this world to be stern and cruel. She decided to be stern and to begin with Miss Exeter, who entered the sitting room at this moment. She was wearing a plain cream-colored dress out of which her lovely head—all brown and rose color and gold—seemed strangely bright colored.
"I suppose you're Dolly," she said in her deep warm voice, and held out an open hand.
Dolly, like most young people, estimated beauty as the best of gifts. She might have been almost as much captured by Pearl's as her brother had been, except that her ego was taken up with the outrage of her being kept waiting—she, the most important person in the house, who had taken the trouble not only to order dinner on time but—what did not always happen—to be on time herself.
She rose, and allowing a limp hand to pass rapidly through Miss Exeter's, she said, "Do let's go in to dinner, mother."
"Yes, indeed," said her mother, coming in rapidly from the piazza. "We dine at eight, Miss Exeter. Another evening I'm sure you will be on time."