During these absences his mother looks uneasy and has once or twice asked me if I know where he is.
My books have come—quantities of books!—and I spend hours in my boudoir, never lifting my eyes from the pages to be distracted by the glaring, mustard-brocade walls around me.
Mrs. Gurrage treats me with respect. There is a gradual but complete change in her manner to me, from what cause I do not know. I am invariably polite to her and consider all her wishes, and she often tells me she is very proud of me; but all trace of the familiarity she exercised towards me in the beginning has disappeared.
I am sorry for her, as she is deeply anxious, also, about this question of the Yeomanry going to the war.
Augustus is still her idol.
Perhaps I am wicked to be so indifferent to them all. Perhaps it is not enough just to submit and to have gentle manners. I ought to display interest; but I cannot—oh, I cannot.
It is the very small things that jar upon me—their sordid views upon no matter what question—the importance they attach to trifles.
Sometimes in the afternoons, after tea, Amelia reads the Family
Herald to Mrs. Gurrage.
"A comfort it was to me in my young days, my dear," she often tells me.
The delinquencies of the house-maids are discussed at dinner, the smallest piece of gossip in Tilchester society.