“Well, hardly that,” I said, marking off with my pen the names of the people on my list who were away and not to be counted on for help with the bazaar. “She badly needed some clothes and couldn’t afford expensive places; so I took her to my little woman. She was able to carry out Mollie’s ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, hasn’t she? She knows so exactly what suits her.”
“Carry out her ideas? She hasn’t an idea in her head. Carry out yours, you mean, you funny creature. I can’t conceive why you took the pains to dress up the deadly little dowd.” Vera drummed with her fingers on the window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray, sweet, impassive, honey-coloured woman, was one of the few people for whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard.
“Oh, you’re mistaken there, Vera, just as you’ve been mistaken about her looks,” I said, all dispassionate limpidity. “She has heaps of ideas, I can assure you, and I saw it from the beginning; just as I saw that she was enchanting looking.”
“Enchanting! Help! Help! That little skim-milk face, with those great calf’s eyes! Who is the poor dear martyr thing who carries her eyes on a plate? St. Lucia, isn’t it? She makes me think of that—as much expression. You may have succeeded in making her less of a dowd, but you’ll never succeed in making her less of a bore.”
“Well, Mrs. Travers-Cray doesn’t find her a bore,” I remarked, casting a glance of quiet, satisfied possessorship at the group outside.
“Oh, Leila always was an angel,” said Vera, “and your little protégée has made a very determined set at her.”
“Sir Francis is an angel, too, then. He delights in her; that’s evident.” It was perhaps rather indiscreet of me to goad Vera like this, but I could not resist taking it out of her and rubbing it into her, and I knew that Sir Francis would vex her almost as much as Mrs. Travers-Cray. “And look at Milly,” I added. “You can’t say that Milly is an angel. The fact is that Mrs. Thornton is a very charming young woman, and that if you don’t see it you are the only person who doesn’t.”
“Another person who doesn’t see it is her husband,” said Vera. She was determined not to show that she was angry, but I could see how angry she was. “Sir Francis, of course, old goose, thinks any one charming if they are young and dress well and look at him with appealing eyes. It is her husband I’m really sorry for. It’s evident that he never spoke to a civilized woman in his life till he came here. He doesn’t show much signs of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It’s pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first curate’s daughter they find round the corner. And now that she’s pushing herself forward like this, he is done for.” Vera, I saw, was very angry to be goaded so far.
“Surely she is the more interesting of the two,” I blandly urged. “Neither of them has a spark of ambition if it comes to pushing; they’ll be quite happy on their chicken-farm. But if it were a question of getting on and getting in with the right people, it would, I imagine, be she rather than he who would count. This last day or two has made that evident to my mind. In her soft, strange way little Mollie is unique, whereas he is only an honest young soldier, and there are thousands more just like him, thank goodness!”
Vera at this turned her head and looked at me for a moment. After all, even if I wasn’t angry, I, too, had given myself away. And it evidently pleased her to recognize this—to recognize that she wasn’t being worsted merely by Mollie’s newly revealed charm, but by my diplomacy as well. And it is rather a good mark to Vera, I think, that I don’t believe it ever crossed her mind for a moment that she had the simplest method of speedy vengeance in her hands—had simply to send me packing. Of course we should both have known that to use such a method would have been to reveal one’s self as crude and vulgar; yet a cattish woman who is very angry may easily become both. Vera didn’t. There are things I always like about her.