It did not occur to her that Barbara made an art of listening to them.
The climax of the season's festivities was reached on the blazing day towards the end of June, when the Jubilee procession wound its way through the flagged and decorated streets, with the small, stout, black-clad figure in the midst of it all, bowing indefatigably to the crowds that thronged streets and windows and balconies and even, when practical roofs.
A window of Sir Francis' Club in Piccadilly was placed by him, with some ceremony, at the disposal of his wife, his eldest son up from Eton, and one daughter, but it was evident that he would regard any further display of family as rather excessive, and Alex herself suggested that she should see it all from a window in Grosvenor Place which had been procured for Pamela and Archie, under the care of old Nurse, and various minor members of the household.
"But that would be so dull!" protested Lady Isabel, shocked.
"Alex can do as she pleases, my dear," said Sir Francis stiffly.
He was not pleased with his eldest daughter, and imagined that her evident shrinking from society arose, not from her acute perception of this fact, but from shame at the recollection of her behaviour towards Noel Cardew, which Sir Francis in his own mind stigmatized as both dishonourable and unladylike. The further reflection he gave to the matter—and reflection with Sir Francis was never anything but deliberate—the more seriously he resented his daughter's lapse from the code of "good form," and the harassed look which she was gradually causing to mar his wife's placid beauty.
He would have liked Alex to be prettily eager for pleasure, as were the young ladies of his day and ideal, and he regarded her obvious discontent and unhappiness as a slur on Lady Isabel's exertions on her behalf.
Very slowly, with the dull implacability of a man slow to assimilate a grievance, and slower still to forgive what he does not understand, Sir Francis was becoming angry with Alex.
"Let her do as she likes, Isabel," he repeated. "If the society we can provide is less amusing than that of children and servants, by all means let her join them."
Lady Isabel did not repeat his words to Alex. She only said: