‘And Constance there is spitefulness enough to go and tell them—favourite as she is!’ said Ida.
‘I should think not!’ said Constance indignantly. ‘As if I would do such a mean thing!’
‘Come, come, Ida,’ said her mother, ‘your sister knows better than that. It’s not the way when she is only just come home, so grown too and improved, “quite the lady.”‘
Mrs. Morton had a mother’s heart for Constance, though only in the third degree, and was really gratified to see her progress. She had turned up her pretty brown hair, and the last year had made her much less of a child in appearance; her features were of delicate mould, she had dark eyes, and a sweet mouth, with a rose-blush complexion, and was pleasing to look on, though, in her mother’s eyes, no rival to the thin, rather sharply-defined features, bright eyes, and pink-and-white complexion that made Ida the belle of a certain set at Westhaven. The party were more amicable over the dinner-table—for dinner it was called, as an assertion of gentility.
‘Are you allowed to dine late,’ asked Ida patronisingly of her sister, ‘when you are not at school?
‘Lady Adela dines early,’ said Constance.
‘Oh, for your sake, I suppose?’
‘Always, I believe,’ said Constance.
‘Yes, always,’ said Herbert. ‘Fine people needn’t ask what’s genteel, you see, Ida.’
That was almost the only breeze, and after dinner Herbert rushed out for a smell of sea,