"It's she," said Mary, flushing with pleasure.
"Mrs. Upton?"
"Yes, she did my hair and gave me the dress. She was so sweet and dear."
Jack lightly touched a plaited ruffle of the wide sleeve, and Mary felt that he had never less thought of her than when he so touched her dress. She put aside the deep little pang that gave her to say: "It's true, Jack, she ought to have young things, just because they are going from her; one feels that: She oughtn't to be standing back, and giving up things, yet. I see a little what you mean. Isn't it pretty?" Still, with an absent hand, he lightly touched, here and there, a ruffle of her sleeve. "But it's like her. I hardly feel myself in it."
"You've never so looked yourself," said Jack. "That's what she does, brings out people's real selves."
Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil did not come back to lunch, and Imogen's face was somber indeed as she faced her guests at the table. Jack, vigilant and pitiless, guessed at the turmoil of her soul.
She asked him, with an icy sweetness, how his letters had prospered. "Did you get them all off?"
Jack said that he had, and Mary, casting a wavering glance at him, saw that if he intended to sin no more, he showed, at all events, a sinful guilelessness of demeanor. She herself began to blush so helplessly and so furiously that Imogen's attention was drawn to her. Imogen, also, was vigilant.
"And what have you been doing, Mary dear?" she asked.
"I—oh"—poor Mary looked the sinful one;—"I—helped Jack a little."