“Sour grapes, my fine fellow, I daresay,” the doctor muttered to himself. He by no means forgave Ford Aviolet his old hostility towards Cecil’s mother, and it was nothing at all to him that now-a-days Rose, and Rose’s ineradicable characteristics, were accepted at Squires with matter-of-course amiability by the old people.
She came to them as usual during Cecil’s holidays, and Dr. Lucian wondered whether her quick intuition had told her everything that her bewildered reasoning powers would be least able to explain.
But she said nothing to him, and the doctor could easily divine reasons for her silence.
Lucian, however, already uneasy, was sharply awakened to a new perception of possible vexation of spirit for Rose in the always uncongenial atmosphere at Squires.
Ford and Diana, paying to the Aviolets one of their interminable visits, tendered to him a casual invitation, and the doctor one day went with them to the house.
It was the first time that he had seen Rose for months, and he noticed with a pang that for the only time since he had known her, her glorious physique had suffered some slight deterioration. She was thinner, and her face struck him as indefinably altered.
Suddenly he understood. “Good God, she’s left off using rouge!” thought the doctor.
Luncheon was as elaborate a function as it was unlively conversationally; but the doctor became gradually aware of undercurrents.
Ford, before the angry bewilderment of Rose, and innocently seconded by the bland obtuseness of his wife’s life-long habit of “chaff,” and the entire unconsciousness of the two old people, Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet, was baiting the boy Cecil.
“No invitations to stay away these holidays, Cecil?”