"I don't think I should mind it if I did not feel so much alone. If I had a place in your hearts," she says. "You all like me, I know, but I want to be loved." Then, tremulously, "Will you try to love me?"
Violet looks at her criticizingly, then she smiles, and, placing her hand beneath Mrs. Geoffrey's chin, turns her face more to the fading light.
"Yes, that is just your greatest misfortune," she says, meditatively. "Love at any price. You would die out of the sunshine, or spoil, which would be worse. You will never be quite happy, I think; and yet perhaps," with a faint sigh, "you get your own good out of your life, after all,—happiness more intense, if briefer, than we more material people can know. There, shall I tell you something? I think you have gained more love in a short time than any other person I ever knew. You have conquered me, at least; and, to tell you the truth," with a slight grimace, "I was quite determined not to like you. Now lie down, and in a minute or two I shall send Halkett to you with the rose-water."
For the first time she stoops forward and presses her lips to Mona's warmly, graciously. Then she leaves her, and, having told her maid to take the rose-water to Mrs. Rodney, goes downstairs again to the drawing-room.
Sir Nicholas is there, silent, but angry, as Violet knows by the frown upon his brow. With his mother he never quarrels, merely expressing disapproval by such signs as an unwillingness to speak, and a stern grave line that grows upon his lips.
"Of course you are all against me," Lady Rodney is saying, in a rather hysterical tone. "Even you, Violet, have taken up that girl's cause!" She says this expectantly, as though calling on her ally for support. But for once the ally fails her. Miss Mansergh maintains an unflinching silence, and seats herself in her low wicker chair before the fire with all the air of one who has made up her mind to the course she intends to pursue, and is not be enticed from it.
"Oh, yes, no doubt I am in the wrong, because I cannot bring myself to adore a vulgar girl who all day long shocks me with her Irishisms," goes on Lady Rodney, almost in tears, born of vexation. "A girl who says, 'Sure you know I didn't' or 'Ah, did ye, now,' or 'Indeed I won't, then!' every other minute. It is too much. What you all see in her I can't imagine. And you too, Violet, you condemn me, I can see."
"Yes, I think you are quite and altogether in the wrong," says Miss Mansergh, in her cool manner, and without any show of hesitation, selecting carefully from the basket near her the exact shade of peacock blue she will require for the cornflower she is working.
Lady Rodney, rising hurriedly, sails with offended dignity from the room.