Parker opened the door to her, surprised at the speediness of her return.
“Why, ma’am!” she exclaimed, “has anything happened?”
“No, nothing, Parker,” said she, feeling that a dreadful truth underlay her words. “Tell the Major, when he comes in, that I have gone to bed.”
She looked for a moment into the dining-room. So short a time had passed that the table was not yet cleared: the printed menu-cards had been collected, but the coffee, which had not been hot enough, still stood untasted in the cups, and the slices of pineapple, cut, but not eaten, were ruinously piled together. The thought of all the luncheons that would be necessary to consume all this expensive food made her feel sick.... These little things had assumed a ridiculous size to her mind; that which had seemed so big was pitifully dwindled. She felt desperately tired, and cold and lonely.
CHAPTER XII
“And what’s to be done now?” said Major Ames, chipping his bacon high into the air above his plate. “If you didn’t hear me, I said, ‘What’s to be done now?’ I don’t know how you can look Riseborough in the face again, and, upon my word, I don’t see how I can. They’ll point at me in the street, and say, ‘That’s Major Ames, whose wife made a fool of herself.’ That’s what you did, Amy. You made a fool of yourself. And what was the good of it all? Are you any nearer getting the vote than before, because you’ve screamed ‘Votes for Women’ a dozen times? You’ve only given a proof the more of how utterly unfit you are to have anything at all of your own, let alone a vote. I passed a sleepless night with thinking of your folly, and I feel infernally unwell this morning.”
This clearly constituted a climax, and Mrs. Ames took advantage of the rhetorical pause that followed.
“Nonsense, Lyndhurst,” she said; “I heard you snoring.”
“It’s enough to make a man snore,” he said. “Snore, indeed! Why couldn’t you even have told me that you were going to behave like a silly lunatic, and if I couldn’t have persuaded you to behave sanely, I could have stopped away, instead of looking on at such an exhibition? Every one will suppose I must have known about it, and have countenanced you. I’ve a good mind to write to the Kent Chronicle and say that I was absolutely ignorant of what you were going to do. You’ve disgraced us; that’s what you’ve done.”
He took a gulp of tea, imprudently, for it was much hotter than he anticipated.