"Come along, Elsie! Come along!" said Violet. "What have you been doing?"
She made this remark partly to prove to Mr. Earlforward that if he imagined she cared twopence for him, or that she feared for the unusualness of the plate covered by another plate which Elsie carried, or that she was not perfectly mistress of herself—if he imagined any of these things he was mistaken.
But Violet, expecting to startle Henry, was herself considerably startled. Elsie was wearing a cap. Now Elsie never wore a cap. And the sight of her in a cap was just as gravely disturbing as the impossible, incredible sight of a servant without a cap would be in the more western parts of London. In a word, it shocked. Violet could make nothing out of it at all. Where had the girl obtained the cap? And why in the name of sense had she chosen this day of all days, this evening when the felicity of domestic life was balanced perilously on a knife-edge, to publish the cap? Violet knew not that Elsie had bought the cap before the marriage, but had lacked the audacity to put it on. And Violet knew not that Elsie was now wearing it as a sort of sign of repentance for sin, and in order to give solemnity and importance to the excessively unusual tea. Elsie undoubtedly had the dramatic instinct, but the present manifestation of it was ill-timed.
"Put it here! Put it here!" said Violet, indicating the space between her own knife and fork, and stopping Elsie with a jerk in her progress towards the master of the house.
When Elsie had gone Violet displayed the contents of the under-plate, and showed that noses had not been wrong in assuming them to be a beef-steak; the steak was stewed; it was very attractive, seductive, full of sound nourishment; one would have deemed it irresistible. Violet rose and deposited the plate in front of Henry, who said nothing. She then bent over him, and with his knife and fork cut off a little corner from the meat.
"You're going to give this bit to your little wife," she whispered endearingly, and kissed him, and sat down again with the bit, which she at once began to eat. "It's very tender," said she, pretending that the steak was a quite commonplace matter, that it was not unique, breathtaking, in the annals of tea-time in Riceyman Steps.
"I don't think I can eat any," said Henry amiably.
"To please me," Violet cajoled again, as at breakfast, changing her voice with all the considerable sexual charm at her disposition.
"I'm really not hungry," said Henry.
"I shan't finish mine till you begin yours." Her voice was now changing.