Milly, Vera’s girl, just seventeen and just promoted to late dinner, sat on Mollie’s other hand and did not, as far as I observed, address her once during the meal. But, then, Milly never makes efforts unless they are plainly useful. All Vera’s beauty had been spoiled in her by the Dixon admixture, and yet she is a most engaging-looking little minx, with broad, bold, black, idle eyes and a blunted nose, auburn hair and a skin of roses and carnations. Vera had seen to that. Poor Vera is quite fond of the child, a half-vexed, half-ironic constantly rebuffed tenderness. But Milly says to me, “Mother is such a bore, you know,” and likes me far better, who make no claim upon her and who, she must feel, like her very little. She will soon take flight, however, when a sufficiently advantageous occasion presents itself. The war has been a sad blow to her projects, and what I like in Milly is the fact that she has never uttered a word of complaint as to the shattering of her girlish gaieties. However, to get back to Mollie Thornton, I don’t think she could have enjoyed her companions at dinner.
After dinner I go and amuse the Tommies and talk to the nurses until bedtime, but, before I went, I observed that Vera, after her wont with the detrimental belongings of a guest, had placed Mollie in a corner with a book and the urgent, smiling murmur: “By a friend of mine. Quite, quite beautiful. I know you’ll love it.” It is a book called “Spiritual Control,” with a portrait of its author, who is a stock-broker, a sleek, stalwart, satisfied person whom Vera characterizes, why I can’t think, except that she had him once to stay after hearing his lecture, as her “friend.” A great many people find the book inspiring; Vera, as a matter of fact, doesn’t, and she found Mr. Cuthbert Dawson a terrible bore. It was plain from her giving poor Mrs. Thornton “Spiritual Control” to read, where she placed her.
When I came back an hour later she was still in her corner with “Spiritual Control,” but she wasn’t reading it. She had drawn the curtain at the window where she sat, and was looking out at the splendid, dramatic moonlight. Sir Francis and Colonel Appleby were reading the evening papers, Lady Dighton and Leila Travers-Cray talked together while they knitted, Milly had disappeared, and at the farthest end of the great room, on its farthest sofa, Vera, pale and pearly, was talking to Captain Thornton.
“Well,” I said, “how is your spirit? Is it more controlled?”
Mrs. Thornton looked up at me, and after a moment her smile of understanding merged into one of friendly enjoyment.
“How do you manage,” she said, “to be so austere in the daytime and so splendid at night? You make me think of a Venetian princess in that brocade.”
“It is nice, isn’t it?” I said. “And made by the littlest of dressmakers. I’m clever at clothes. But tell me how you like Mr. Cuthbert Dawson.”
“Well, he is very cheerful and sincere,” said Mrs. Thornton, kindly; “but I don’t seem to get much out of it. I’m really too tired and stupid to read to-night.”
“And it’s time your husband was in bed,” I said. “One of the nurses is coming for him.”
Mrs. Thornton looked down the long room at her husband.