The last words mollified Rose instantly.
“It’s all right. I’m sorry, too, if I was rude. Don’t let’s talk about it any more.”
They made spasmodic conversation upon indifferent subjects until Squires was reached. Rose, tired and out of spirits, trailing slowly upstairs, heard Diana’s voice incautiously raised in Lady Aviolet’s morning-room.
“I hope I’ve done some good, Cousin Catherine. I’ve been reading the Riot Act, but of course——”
The door was closed, and Rose proceeded on her way, muttering sub-audibly, “Damn her impudence!”
Her perceptions, acute, if inarticulate, sensed in Diana Grierson-Amberly all the blind, limitless cruelty of the obtuse. She felt strangely weak and frightened at the thought of it, as though knowing that from that cruelty of the unimaginative there is no appeal.
In the nursery, she found Cecil strutting about, reciting a sort of saga, with the intensely disapproving eyes of Miss Wade fixed upon him in a horrified stare.
“An’ there was elephants there, and a tiger, and—and horses as big as lions; and they all lay down in front of me until I said, ‘Up!’ Like that I said it, very loud and grand—‘UP!’ I said. That was in Colombo, once.”
“Hallo, Ces,” Rose said rather wearily. She guessed, from the expression of the governess, what was coming.
“I’m glad you’ve just happened to come in, Mrs. Aviolet. There’s a little boy here who hardly seems to know the difference between pretence and reality, I’m afraid.”