“And where do I come in?”
Lady Aviolet looked her interrogation at the truculence that had suddenly sprung into Rose’s voice.
“Ford this, and Ford that. Ces is my kid, and I think I ought to be consulted, if there’s going to be talk about where he’s going to, and all the rest of it.”
“I don’t know what you mean, my dear. Ford will talk it all over with you before anything is settled, naturally. Here we are! Now do go and rest quietly in your own room till tea-time. I’m sure you’re tired.”
Rose understood only too well that this forbearing epithet was applied to what she herself ruefully stigmatized as her own crossness. She felt herself, indeed, to be in a strangely restless mood, and disinclined in the extreme to follow Lady Aviolet’s advice and rest.
Instead, she threw off her hat, with its detested little black veil, the moment she reached her room, and stared earnestly at herself in the glass.
Even to her own perceptions, it was an innocent, almost child-like face that gazed back at her, in spite of her big frame and the very patent artificial colour on her full lips.
“I certainly don’t look twenty-five,” she reflected with satisfaction.
Her yellow hair fell in loose strands across her forehead and temples, and she pushed it back impatiently. That unusual corn-colour was an asset, especially with brown eyes and dark lashes, but she had always longed for curly hair. To-day, she thought that she would like to have had brown curly hair, and dark blue eyes, and to have been slim, as well as tall.
“I bet I weigh all of eleven stone,” she murmured disgustedly, her eyes travelling across the square breadth of her fine shoulders and the deep, full curves of her breast.