‘He does try!’ says Betty angrily. She is so evidently on the defensive—on the side of the prisoner at the bar—that they all stare, a matter that brings her to her senses in a hurry. She to defend Dom, with whom she is always at daggers drawn! A gleam of pleasure in Dom’s eyes enrages her, and brings the crisis.
‘He does try,’ repeats she. ‘But’—with a glance at Dom meant to reduce him to powder—‘he has no brains.’
The glance is lost. Dom comes up smiling.
‘You’ve got it,’ says he. And then, ‘Anyway, Miss Moore, our only poet thought you were a sylvan goddess. Will that do, Betty? Didn’t he, Carew?’
‘He’s a fool,’ says Carew morosely.
‘Did you notice him, Ella?’ asks Betty. ‘A little man with a dismal eye and a nose you could hang your hat on? If poets are all like that, defend me from them! He goes about as if he was searching for a corner in which to weep, and he looks as if——’
‘“’E don’t know where ’e are,”’ quotes Dom.
‘Yes, I saw him. He was sitting near you, Susan; and I saw Mr. Wyndham, and——’ She pauses, and a faint colour steals into her cheeks. ‘Susan, who was that woman with the high things in her bonnet?’
‘High things!’ Susan looks puzzled, and Ella goes on to describe Mrs. Prior’s bonnet with more extreme accuracy.
‘That was Mrs. Prior—Mr. Wyndham’s aunt. Fancy your noticing her! Do you know, Ella, I can’t bear her, or her daughter. They are all so—so unreal—so cruel, I think——’