Felicia had risen, an instinctive recoil from something snake-like.
“No, I don’t allow any pity that divides me from my father,” she said. “You misunderstand my husband—and the privileges of your friendship for him.”
She had not known what her intention was in rising; but now, looking at her father, she turned and went across the room to him.
Angela watched her in silence. With an effort she brought her eyes back to Geoffrey, who, still stretched out in his chair, met them with a sardonic smile. She felt as if Felicia had put a gash across her face and as if he were pitilessly jibing at it. Her hand, again turning her fan, trembled as she said, “Mrs. Wynne has a talent for coups de théâtre.”
“And you for carrying daggers up your sleeve, Angela. I perceive that walls might be useful.”
“You are blinded, I know, to her cruelty. It is she who uses daggers. My sympathy was real—a sympathy that any friend might have expressed—I supposed, of course, that she felt with her husband. Her bitter misconception of me distorts every effort I make to touch her.” The pathos and nobility of her words seemed to Angela her own nobility and pathos. Her eyes filled with sincerest tears.
“Dropping dramatic metaphors, Angela, I certainly think that since you can’t speak to Mrs. Wynne without making yourself highly disagreeable, you’d better give up trying to speak at all.”
Geoffrey rose. With something of the cheerful and inflexible mien of an Apollo, turning, bow-in-hand, from the slaughtered children of Niobe, he walked away.
CHAPTER IV
“WHAT did you and Angela have to say to one another?” Maurice asked. He and Felicia were driving down the polished sweep of Piccadilly alone, for Mr. Merrick disliked crowded hansoms, and the long silence had been unbroken. Leaning back in her corner, her cloak folded tightly around her, Felicia had gazed blankly at the powdery blue of the sky, the thickly sprinkled lights beneath it, her heart a chamber of angry misery. Maurice’s question, its light curiosity like the aimless fumbling of a key, suddenly unlocked and threw open the door.