And then Terry, so affectionate and faithful to her young friend Robert,—for her to have to look on while he forgot her very existence and sat on the floor at somebody else’s feet, his rapt gaze fixed unswervingly on a face that wasn’t hers, was most annoying. He had insisted on coming round with her to Laura’s party, though she refused at first to bring him. So violently determined was he, however, that he assured her she would never see him again if she didn’t take him round with her; and Terry, cowed, as many a fond woman had been before her by this threat, gave in, and spent the evening in a condition of high indignation.
It was Laura, though, with whom she was indignant,—Laura, the sister she had always so much loved, who had arranged the whole thing so as to set everybody by the ears. She forgave Robert—they had got to the stage when she was continually forgiving him, and he was continually hoping she wouldn’t—for how could he help it if this artful young woman from the slums laid herself out to beguile him? It was all Laura’s fault. Terry couldn’t have believed her goodnatured sister had it in her to be so wickedly mischievous. What devil had taken possession of her? First dressing the girl up and spoiling poor Jack Gillespie’s play with her, and then getting them all there to supper, so as to make fools of them....
‘I hope you’re pleased with your detestable party,’ she said, leaning against the chimney piece, staring in wrathful disgust at the circle round Sally, who, glancing shyly and furtively every now and then at the lovely dark lady dressed like a rose, thought she must surely be the most beautiful lady in the whole world, but feeling, judged Sally, a bit on the sick side that evening,—probably eaten something.
‘I’m not at all pleased,’ snapped Laura, ‘and I wish to goodness you’d all go home.’
That, however, was exactly what they couldn’t bear to do. Hours passed, and Laura’s party still went on. The men were unable to tear themselves away from Sally, whose every utterance—she said as little as possible, but couldn’t avoid answering direct questions—filled them with fresh delight, and the two women, Terry and her aggrieved sister-in-law, were doggedly determined to stay as long as they did.
‘If she weren’t so lovely,’ murmured Lady Streatley to the indignant Terry, when a roar of laughter, in which the loudest roar was Streatley’s, succeeded something Sally, tired and bewildered, had said in answer to a question, ‘I suppose they wouldn’t see anything at all in that Cockney talk.’
‘They’d think it unendurable,’ said Terry shortly.
‘But you see,’ said Laura, who was cross with Terry, ‘she happens to be the most beautiful thing any of us have ever seen.’
‘Oh, I quite see she’s very beautiful,’ said poor Lady Streatley, who had given Streatley seven children and was no longer the woman she was.
‘If one likes that sort of thing,’ said Terry, descending in her anger to primitive woman.