“Monica Trant.”
There!
CHAPTER X
“HIS” MOTHER’S INVITATION
The note of invitation from “my fiancé’s mother” is purely formal and absolutely non-committal; in fact, exactly the note I should have imagined that a Mrs. Waters would write.
I’ve got a perfectly clear mental image of this mother of an animated tape-machine. Handsome, in a regular-profiled, stately, mid-Victorian style, with steely grey eyes that “corkscrew” all the self-possession out of you, and—oh, the manner! She won’t be openly disagreeable after all, I’ve decided. Worse; she’ll be rigidly, frigidly polite; clothing in irreproachable civilities the obvious wonder whether her son has taken leave of his senses, to propose to one of his own employees.
She writes that she looks forward (of course!) with pleasure (dis-pleasure, she means) to making my acquaintance (will she!) at The Lawn (well, I suppose they can’t call their house The Sarcophagus. But that’s what it ought to be. A glorified edition of the Governor’s private office. Marble halls and chilly statuary—brr!) on Monday next. I expect she guesses that “this Miss Trant,” or “that young woman,” or “the horrid little typist-person,” or whatever she calls me in her own mind, will be rather overwhelmed by the prospect; and no doubt Mrs. Waters means to see that I shall continue being overwhelmed—“kept in my place,” indeed—during the whole of the fortnight that the Governor specified. But she can’t realize the positive panic with which I anticipate the meeting. And, if I can steel myself to help it, she shall not realize it.
“I should think you can hardly wait until you get there, Tots,” said Cicely, watching me pack new clothes in the new dress-basket bought specially for the dread occasion, for I’ve spent every minute of two days in shopping. “Aren’t you dying to see what everything is going to be like?”
“I shall have to survive until to-morrow, anyhow.”