Mrs. Lidcote, though she had made the gesture of ringing for her maid, had not done so.
When the door closed, she continued to stand motionless in the middle of her soft spacious room. The fire which had been kindled at twilight danced on the brightness of silver and mirrors and sober gilding; and the sofa toward which she had been urged by Miss Suffern heaped up its cushions in inviting proximity to a table laden with new books and papers. She could not recall having ever been more luxuriously housed, or having ever had so strange a sense of being out alone, under the night, in a windbeaten plain. She sat down by the fire and thought.
A knock on the door made her lift her head, and she saw her daughter on the threshold. The intricate ordering of Leila’s fair hair and the flying folds of her dressinggown showed that she had interrupted her dressing to hasten to her mother; but once in the room she paused a moment, smiling uncertainly, as though she had forgotten the object of her haste.
Mrs. Lidcote rose to her feet. “Time to dress, dearest? Don’t scold! I shan’t be late.”
“To dress?” Leila stood before her with a puzzled look. “Why, I thought, dear—I mean, I hoped you’d decided just to stay here quietly and rest.”
Her mother smiled. “But I’ve been resting all the afternoon!”
“Yes, but—you know you do look tired. And when Susy told me just now that you meant to make the effort—”
“You came to stop me?”
“I came to tell you that you needn’t feel in the least obliged—”
“Of course. I understand that.”