Maud, gently chided by Joseph for not having come out to welcome the visitors, said that she had not heard their arrival. "I have a very interesting book here," she said. "I got it out of the library today. It is the one you or Nat had out a little while ago, and which you thought I should not care for, about the poor Empress of Austria. Fancy, Joseph! She actually rode in a circus!"
Joseph, who possibly had a very fair idea of what the company would have to suffer from his wife's perusal of this, or any other, book, suggested tactfully that it should be put away until after Christmas, and reminded her that she was Valerie's hostess, and should have showed her the way to her room.
"No, dear," replied Maud. "I'm sure I had nothing to do with inviting Valerie here. Nor do I see why I shouldn't read my book at Christmas as well as at any other time. She could sit on her hair. Fancy!"
There did not seem to be much hope of dragging Maud's attention away from the Empress's peculiarities, so, with a fond pat on her shoulder, Joseph bustled away again, to irritate the servants by begging them to put tea forward, and to trot upstairs to tap on Valerie's door, and ask if she had everything she wanted.
Tea was served in the drawing-room. Maud laid aside the Life of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, and poured out. She sat on the sofa, a dump of a woman behind a staggering array of embossed silver, and when each of the visitors came into the room, she extended her small plump hand with the same mechanical smile, and the same colourless phrase of welcome.
Mathilda sat beside her, and laughed when she saw the title of the book Maud had been reading. "Last time I was here it was the Memoirs of a Lady-in-Waiting," she said, teasing Maud.
Mockery slid off the armour of Maud's self-sufficiency. "I like that kind of book," she replied simply.
When Nathaniel came in with Edgar Mottisfont, Stephen dragged himself out of a deep armchair, saying ungraciously: "Got your chair, uncle."
Nathaniel accepted this overture in the spirit in which it was presumably meant. "Don't disturb yourself, my boy. How have you been keeping?"
"All right," Stephen said. He added, with a further effort towards civility: "You look very fit."