"As if he would stay with any old Mrs. Bishop when he knew you were coming here!" said Isabel scornfully. "Poor old Val, I shan't tell him how you misjudged him, he'd be so hurt. But I'll send him down, shall I, to see you and Captain Hyde after supper?—Tired? Oh no, he's never too tired to go to Wanhope."
She kissed Laura, gave Lawrence her sweetest friendly smile, and returned to the lawn, where Yvonne had apparently taken root upon her tigerskin. Isabel heard Rowsley say, "Make her shut up, Jack," but before she could ask why Yvonne was to be shut up the daughter of Lilith had opened fire on the daughter of Eve. "And what did you think of Lawrence Hyde?" Mrs. Bendish asked, stretching herself out like a snake and examining Isabel out of her pale eyes, much the colour of an unripe gooseberry. "Was he very attractive? Oh Isabel! oh Isabel! I should not have thought this of one so young."
Isabel considered the point. "I can't understand him," she said honestly. "I liked parts of him. He isn't so—so homogeneous as most people are.
"Did he ask you for the honeysuckle?"
"No, I gave it to him for a peace offering. I hurt his feelings, and afterwards I was sorry and wanted to make it up with him. But would you have thought he had any feelings? any, that is, that anything I said would hurt?"
"Certainly not," from Rowsley.
"Any woman can hurt any man," said Yvonne. "But, of course, you aren't a woman, Isabel. What was the trouble?"
"Oh, something about the war."
"No, my child, it wasn't about the war. It was something that stung up his vanity or his self-love. Lawrence isn't a sentimentalist like Jack or Val." Here Jack Bendish got as far as an artless "Oh, I say!" but his wife paid no attention. "Lawrence never took the war seriously."
"But he did," insisted Isabel. "He coloured all over his face—"