He didn’t answer till he was close to her. Then he said, looking worried, ‘Isn’t she back yet?’
‘No. Where is she?’
He stared at Virginia a moment, then made a gesture of extreme impatience. ‘I can’t imagine,’ he said, pulling out his watch and beginning to walk quickly across the terrace to the open windows of the drawing-room, for he hadn’t much time, he saw, before his train left, ‘what possessed your mother.’
‘Possessed her?’ echoed Virginia, her eyes and mouth all astonishment.
‘Anything more unsuitable——’ said Stephen, quickly going through the drawing-room, followed by Virginia. ‘Tut, tut,’ he finished, in a most strange way.
Virginia’s heart gave a queer kind of drop. ‘Unsuitable?’ she repeated faintly.
It was the word of all others she dreaded hearing applied to her mother, and applied by Stephen. She herself had felt many little things unsuitable in her mother during this visit, the first real visit since her marriage, but she had so much hoped Stephen hadn’t noticed, and she did so much want him to continue in the warm respect and admiration for her mother he had felt before. What had she done now? What could she have done to produce this fluster of annoyance in the quiet, controlled Stephen?
‘She all but ran over me in my own village street,’ he said, going into the study and hastily collecting his things.
Virginia could only again echo. ‘All but ran over you?’ she repeated blankly.
‘Yes. You know how strongly I feel about motor-cycles, and the type of scallywag youth who uses them. Where is my muffler?’