“I have made an appointment to sit to Mr. Dundas this afternoon,” she said. “It is absurd for you to tell me that you didn’t know that. But I ask you how you knew?”
“Philip told me,” said Lady Ellington.
“Philip!” cried Madge. Then she controlled that sudden ebullition, for every fibre within her knew that her incredulity, which only half-believed this, had done him wrong.
So, calming herself, she spoke again.
“I don’t believe that,” she said.
That was the declaration of war; quiet, tranquil, but final. The point between the two was vital, it reached downwards into the depths of individuality where compromise cannot live, being unable to breathe in so compressed an atmosphere. And Lady Ellington knew that as well as Madge; there was war. She and her daughter stood in unreconcileable camps, diplomacy was dumb, the clash of arms could alone break the silence. She pointed to the motor-car, for the modernity of setting was inevitable, even though primeval passions were pitted against each other.
“It does not make the slightest difference whether you believe it or not,” she said quietly. “Get into the motor, as you have sent your cab away.”
Madge seemed hardly to hear this.
“Philip never told you,” she repeated, “because he promised me he would not.”
Lady Ellington judged that it would be mere waste of energy or ammunition to contest this, for it was now immaterial to her campaign. She realised also that she needed all the energy and ammunition that she possessed to enable her to carry out her main movement. She knew, too, that Madge had long been accustomed to obey her mere voice; the instinct of obedience to that was deeply rooted. But how wholly it was uprooted now she did not yet guess.