She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling with cousinly good-humour:
"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that, Judith darling—how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he doesn’t. You are so essentially a woman’s woman, aren’t you? I suppose it’s just because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don’t feel drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you, of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their hair and the colour of their ties. You’re a first-rate woman’s woman, I grant you, and you’re very clever and you’ve succeeded in foisting your little friend on silly Sir Francis and on Leila Travers-Cray, and it’s all rather dear and funny of you, and I’ve quite loved watching it all and seeing you at work; but you won’t succeed in foisting Mrs. Thornton on her husband, and he’ll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out whether he’s anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found him,"—and Vera now spoke with a simple candour,—“quite, quite a dear; with a great deal in him—sensitiveness, tact, flavour. So much could have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who doesn’t know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? No; I’m afraid Mrs. Mollie, after she’s left your hands, Judith dear, will tumble quite, quite flat again. Would you mind, darling, getting all the invitations off to-day? We mustn’t be slipshod about it. And don’t forget to write to the merry-go-round man, and to Mark Hammond to see if he’ll sing.” So, having delivered what she hoped might be a somewhat stinging shaft at my complacency, Vera trailed away.
If I hadn’t so goaded her I don’t believe, really, that she’d have taken the trouble that she did take to prove herself right and me wrong. There had been, before this, little conscious malice or intended unkindness. But now the claws were out. During the next day or two it at once justified and infuriated me to watch the manifold little slights and snubs of which poor Mollie was the victim, the dexterity with which, while seeming all sweetness, Vera essayed to belittle and discompose her, to display her as ignorant or awkward or second-rate. Only a woman can be aware of what another woman is accomplishing on these lines, and though Captain Thornton once or twice showed a puzzled brow, her skill equalled her malice, and he never really saw. I was prepared for it when Mollie came to my study one morning and shut the door and said:
“I’m afraid I can’t stand it any longer, Judith.”
“It has been pretty bad,” I said. “She’s been so infernally clever, too.”
“Our time is really nearly up,” said Mollie, “and I’m trying to think of some excuse for getting Clive to feel we’d better go before it comes. Only now she’s telling him that I am jealous of her.”
Pen in hand, I leaned back and looked up at my poor little accomplice. This, I recognized, was indeed Vera’s trump-card, but I certainly hadn’t foreseen that she would use it.
“Has he told you so?” I asked. “Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t, could he? But I know it. Men are very transparent, aren’t they, Judith? He is always urging me to see more of her, and telling me that she is so kind, so clever, such a dear, and that I’d really think so, too, if I’d try to see more of her. And when I say that I’m sure she is, and that I hope I shall see more of her, he thinks—I can see it—that I’m only playing up, and between us, her and me, he is rather wretched and uncomfortable. What shall I do, Judith? You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures, she was really sneering at father’s, and when I tried to answer,—because I felt I had to answer about that,—making me seem so rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he didn’t understand. And it’s all the time like that. I have to pretend not to see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns everything against me.”
“Be patient. Give her a little more time,” I said. “She’ll run to earth if you give her a little more time.”
“But it is so horrid, between Clive and me, Judith: if I say what I think to him, he will only see it as jealousy, so even with him I have to pretend, and it makes me feel as if I were growing to be like her, and I can’t bear it.”