‘How can I, when Stephen and I——’
Dear, dear little Virginia. Catherine was so much pleased and touched that she kissed Virginia’s hand over and over again. ‘My darling little daughter,’ she said, ‘my own darling little daughter——’ and added, and really at the moment believed it, forgetting how completely she had been absorbed only in Christopher, ‘I have missed you so.’
Virginia at once retreated into her shell. Instinctively she felt the lapse from truth. ‘Sweet of you, mother,’ she said in her usual awkward little way.
She drew her hand back. It was strange, and not quite right somehow, for her mother to be kissing it like that. It made her feel uncomfortable.
‘Wouldn’t you,’ she suggested, so as to turn the talk to practical matters, ‘like to wash your face, mother?’
‘Wash my face?’ echoed Catherine, startled and staring at her. ‘Why?’
‘I always find cold water such a help,’ said Virginia, ‘if one is rather tired.’
Catherine dropped back again on to her cushions. ‘Darling child,’ she murmured, closing her eyes a minute. Cold water—on the top of the delicate structure of Sackville Street——
No, she wouldn’t wash her face; she was quite comfortable, and not a bit tired, and was so very, very happy to be with her little Virginia.
Virginia got further into her shell. There was a something about her mother that she wasn’t accustomed to. She had always been a loving mother, but not quite—not exuberant like this. Something had gone. Was it—Virginia searched laboriously round in her scrupulous mind—dignity?