“Why didn’t you wire me to say you were coming?” he asked.
“I came because Stella wrote to me.”
Michael frowned, and his mother went on:
“It wasn’t very thoughtful of you to let me know about your marriage through her. I think you might have managed to write to me about it yourself.”
Michael had been so much wrapped up in his arrangements, and apart from them so utterly engrossed in his secluded life with Lily during the past ten days, that it came upon him with a shock to realize that his mother might be justified in thinking that he had treated her very inconsiderately.
“I’m sorry. It was wrong of me,” he admitted. “But life has been such a whirl lately that I’ve somehow taken for granted the obvious courtesies. Besides, Stella was so very unfair to Lily that it rather choked me off taking anybody else into my confidence. And, mother, why do you begin on the subject at once, before you’ve even taken your things off?”
She flung back her furs and regarded him tragically.
“Michael, how can you dare to think of such trivialities when you are standing at the edge of this terrible step?”
“Oh, I think I’m perfectly level-headed,” he said, “even on the brink of disaster.”
“Such a dreadful journey from Cannes! I wish I’d come back in March as I meant to. But Mrs. Carruthers was ill, and I couldn’t very well leave her. She’s always nervous in lifts, and hates the central-heating. I did not sleep a moment, and a most objectionable couple of Germans in the next compartment of the wagons-lits used all the water in the washing-place. So very annoying, for one never expects foreigners to think about washing. Oh, yes, a dreadful night and all because of you, and now you ask most cruelly why I don’t take my things off.”