“It’s lovely,” said Nancy frankly.
“Christopher is so old-fashioned that he’s been objecting to it as indecent,” said the girl with perfect unconcern.
“So it is,” Christopher asserted.
“Surely decency and indecency are out of date, nowadays,” Martyn suggested. “Like talking of people being shocked. I believe it was quite usual to be shocked, some years ago, but one never hears of its happening now.”
“Nancy,” said Sallie, “will your Mrs. Harter be shocked? She looked rather as though she might be, at the concert.”
“No, she won’t,” Mrs. Fazackerly asserted positively. “And she’s not my Mrs. Harter. I know very little of her, except that she hasn’t many friends.”
“Is she amusing?”
It might have been truthfully asserted that no one, on that first evening, found Mrs. Harter exactly amusing. It was, indeed, very difficult to make her utter a word, from what I was told.
She sat on the edge of an armchair, wearing the same black dress that she had worn at the concert, and twisting her wedding ring round and round on her finger. Her dark face wore a look of resentful shyness, her voice was low and abrupt, and all her replies were monosyllables. She did not originate any remark at all.
Her evident sense of constraint began to affect everybody in the room.