"You think so?" The bony hands were restless and tremulous; the dark eyes glistened. "It isn't quite ordinary, is it? But then, of course, it tells nothing about her character. She is coming to stay for a day or two coming on Saturday. If I don't like her, no harm's done. Back she goes to her people, that's all—her mother's family—I know nothing about them, and care less. At all events, she looks endurable—don't you think?"
"Much more than that," said Constance. "A very nice girl, I should imagine."
"Ha! You mean that?—Of course you do, or you wouldn't say it. But then, if she's only a 'nice girl'—pooh! She ought to be more than that. What's the use of a photograph? Every photo ever taken of me made me look a simpering idiot."
This was by no means true, but Lady Ogram had always been a bad sitter to the camera, and had destroyed most of its results. The oil painting in the dining-room she regarded with a moderate complacency. Many a time during the latter years of withering and enfeeblement her memory had turned to that shining head in marble, which was hidden away amid half a century's dust under the roof at Rivenoak. There, and there only, survived the glory of her youth, when not the face alone, but all her faultless body made the artist's rapture.
"Well," she said, abruptly, "you'll see the girl. Her name is May Tomalin. You're not obliged to like her. You're not obliged to tell me what you think of her. Most likely I shan't ask you.—By the bye, I had a letter from Dyce Lashmar this morning."
"Indeed?" said the other, with a careless smile.
"I like his way of writing. It's straight-forward and sharp-cut, like his talk. A man who means what he says, and knows how to say it; that's a great deal nowadays."
Constance assented with all good-humour to Lady Ogram's praise.
"You must answer him for me," the old lady continued. "No need, of course, to show me what you write; just put it into a letter of your own."
"I hardly think I shall be writing to Mr. Lashmar," said Miss Bride, very quietly.