"Where are you off to now?" asked Clowes, pushing her away: "you look very smart. I like that cotton dress. It is cotton, isn't it?" he rubbed the fabric gingerly between his finger and thumb. "Did Catherine make it? That girl is a jewel. I like that gipsy hat too, it's a pretty shape and it shades your eyes. I call that sensible, which can't often be said for a woman's clothes. You have good eyes, Laura, well worth shading, though your figure is your trump card. I like these fitting bodices that give a woman a chance to show what shape she is. All you Selincourt women score in evening gowns. Yvonne has a topping figure, though she's an ugly little devil. She has an American complexion and her eyes aren't as good as yours. Where did you say you were going?"
"To the station to meet Lawrence. I promised to fetch him in the car."
"Lawrence? So he's due today, is he? I'd forgotten all about him. And you're meeting him? Oh yes, that explains the dress and hat, I thought you wouldn't have put them on for my benefit."
"Dear, it's only one of the cotton frocks I wear every day, and I couldn't go driving without a hat, could I?"
"Can't conceive why you want to go at all." Laura was silent. "If Lawrence must be met, why can't Miller go alone?" Miller was the chauffeur. "Undignified, I call it, the way you women run after a man nowadays. You think men like it but they don't."
Laura wondered if she dared tell him not to be silly. He might take it with a grin, in which case he would probably relent and let her go: or—? The field of alternative conjecture was wide. In the end Laura, whose knee was still aching from her adventure with the chair, decided to chance it. But—perhaps because they were suffused with irritation—the words had no sooner left her lips than she regretted them.
"I won't have it." Bernard's heavy jaw was clenched like a bloodhound's. "It's not decent running after Hyde while I'm tied here by the leg. I won't have you set all the village talking. There's the Times on my table. Stop. Where are you going?"
"To ring the bell. It's time Miller started. You don't want your cousin to find no one there to meet him—not even a cart for his luggage."
"He can walk. Do him good: and Miller can fetch the luggage afterwards. You do as I tell you. Take the Times. Sit down in that chair with your face to the light and read me the leading articles and the rest of the news on Page 7. Don't gabble: read distinctly if you can—you're supposed to be an educated woman, aren't you?"
Poor Laura had been looking forward to her drive. She had taken some innocent pleasure in choosing the prettiest of her morning dresses, a gingham that fell into soft folds the colour of a periwinkle, and in rearranging the liberty scarf on her drooping gipsy straw, and in putting on her long fringed gauntlets and little country shoes. Her husband's compliments made her wince, Jack Bendish had eyes only for his wife, Val Stafford's admiration was sweet but indiscriminate: but she remembered Lawrence as a connoisseur. And worse than the sting of her own small disappointment were the breaking of her promise to Lawrence, the failure in hospitality, in common courtesy.