CHAPTER IX
CINDERELLA
Helena tried not to look as though she minded when Hubert came down, glorious in evening dress at six o'clock.
"It is an early start," she said cheerfully.
"Yes," he replied; "but that means I shall be home all the earlier. The dinner begins at seven and I shan't make a long speech—trust me—so you can expect me back not later than half past ten or eleven at the very latest."
He just restrained himself from saying once more that he thought her stupid not to go across to the Institute instead of moping all alone till then. Even so his farewell was a little cold for, though he kept silence, he could not help feeling she had been selfish over the whole business. Her air of martyrdom had rubbed some gilt off the occasion's splendour.
As for Helena, having waved him gaily out of sight, she did not return and give way to a natural sorrow, as he imagined, typically penitent so soon as he had parted from her. She looked, it is true, hard and thoughtful for a moment. Then she laughed almost happily. What did it matter really? It would only be one evening alone, one lecture missed;—and who was Mrs. Boyd? Why of course any one really nice would be glad that her husband had been honoured by these beastly Kit Kats, whoever they might be.
She sat down and wrote a long letter—about everything else in the world—to her lonely mother, who after all never had any one at all to dine with her, unless you counted clergymen.
That finished, it was dinner-time and that was fun because she had ordered or brought in all her pet kickshaws—shrimps, dough-nuts and so forth—which Hubert always vetoed, describing them expansively as dirty feeding. Men, she decided, got so little out of life; always beef and cabbages and yesterday to-morrow....