"Is Mr. Chesney still—asleep?"
"He will sleep probably until to-morrow afternoon, madam."
"Let me know when he recovers—I shall trust to you to tell me when it is best for me to see him."
"I will, madam."
"Then—good-night, Gaynor."
"Good-night, madam. I hope that you will rest well."
Lady Wychcote arrived next morning and drove straight from the train to the house in Regent's Park. She was still a beautiful woman; but as Cecil had told Sophy during their engagement, with that peculiar British frankness in speaking of the closest relations, she was "as hard as nails," and her beauty was also adamantine. Though sixty, she did not look more than forty-five, but her "make-up" was judicious and wonderfully well done. There were people who said that Cecily Wychcote had gone to Paris for six months or so, and there, in a mysterious seclusion, had had the skin peeled from her face by some adept in the art of flaying, and that this explained the absence of wrinkles "at her age." True, wrinkles in the ordinary sense of the word she had not; her well-chiselled face was as smooth and empty of expression in repose as a Wedgewood plaque, and its patine was as rare a work of art; but her icy eyes, still as blue as cobalt, could express many things very admirably, as could her delicate thin lips and nostrils. Lady Wychcote's wig was as conservative as the politics of her house. It was a fair brown, and here and there the artist had woven in grey hairs. She dressed well. She was the modern type of young-old woman in its highest perfection. Only her language, like her mind, had a taint of early Victorian; but of this she was totally unaware.
XVI
Lady Wychcote entered the drawing-room abruptly, very smart and untravel-stained in her blue serge gown with little gilet and toque of purple velvet. She never suffered from seasickness, and through her veil of black-dotted tulle she certainly did not look more than five-and-forty. She barely gave herself time to brush her daughter-in-law's cheek with the chenille dots of her veil and mutter "How d'ye do?" In the same breath, in her brittle, imperious voice, she rapped out: