He interpreted Jenny's expression, now. It was fear. Again he became conscious of the room's stuffiness, and the weapons glittering round the walls: Jennifer said:
"Richard Fleet my fiancé, is the son of the Sir George Fleet who died. Aunt Cicely, who's only an aunt by courtesy, is Lady Fleet My grandmother is their closest friend."
"Listen, Jenny," said Martin, after a pause during which his throat felt dry. "There's only one question I'm going to ask you, but it's got to be answered."
"Yes?"
"Do you still feel as you did — in the train? Do you?" "Yes," replied Jenny and lifted her eyes. "Yes!"
"Jennifer, dear!" interrupted a calm, authoritative female voice. It cracked their idyll to bits. Jenny started; Martin swung round guiltily. "
And it is now time, in this chronicle, to introduce none other than Sophia, Dowager Countess of Brayle.
She had approached unheard. She was a large, commanding woman, her grey-white hair confined under a rakish fashionable hat, and her body so compressed into a dress of garish design that it almost, but not quite, failed to make her seem fat Her voice, which forty-odd years ago had been called a 'pure contralto' as her nose had been called 'sweetly aquiline,' could often be heard speaking on public platforms.
The Dowager Countess, in fact, occasionally showed habits rakish and even skittish. At these same public meetings, for instance, she had a trick of taking two sweeping steps backwards, while raising her right arm and exclaiming, "Here's three chee-ah-s." Sometimes she even did this in private, to the mild-voiced protest of Aunt Cicely.
All her friends would testify to her good qualities: that she was fair, that she was generous, that she even had a sense of humour. She had perhaps every good quality except that of being likeable. But that did not matter. The Dowager Countess meant to get her own way, always got her own way, and accepted this as naturally as she expected a lamp to light at the click of a switch. Whether you liked her, or didn't like her, simply did not matter.