Vibart walked back with him to Millbrook. On her doorstep they met Mrs. Carstyle, flushed and feathered, with a card-case and dusty boots.
“I don’t ask you in,” she said plaintively, to Vibart, “because I can’t answer for the food this evening. My maid-of-all-work tells me that she’s going to a ball—which is more than I’ve done in years! And besides, it would be cruel to ask you to spend such a hot evening in our stuffy little house—the air is so much cooler at Mrs. Vance’s. Remember me to Mrs. Vance, please, and tell her how sorry I am that I can no longer include her in my round of visits. When I had my carriage I saw the people I liked, but now that I have to walk, my social opportunities are more limited. I was not obliged to do my visiting on foot when I was younger, and my doctor tells me that to persons accustomed to a carriage no exercise is more injurious than walking.”
She glanced at her husband with a smile of unforgiving sweetness.
“Fortunately,” she concluded, “it agrees with Mr. Carstyle.”
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD
I
A Newport drawing-room. Tapestries, flowers, bric-a-brac. Through the windows, a geranium-edged lawn, the cliffs and the sea. Isabel Warland sits reading. Lucius Warland enters in flannels and a yachting-cap.
Isabel. Back already?
Warland. The wind dropped—it turned into a drifting race. Langham took me off the yacht on his launch. What time is it? Two o’clock? Where’s Mrs. Raynor?