Mary was heartily glad when the luncheon-party broke up. Far more acutely than Hugh, she was aware of these emotions. She talked to Wally, for he seemed pathetic to her understanding, a puppet less than life-size, cruelly set up to provide a contrast to the animal vigour of Steel, and the glitter of the Prince. Ermyntrude became monstrous in her eyes, a great purring cat, sleeking herself between two males. For a distorted moment, Mary saw Steel as a figure of lust, and the Prince one of cold calculation. Ermyntrude, smiling and enjoying herself between them, seemed grotesque in her inability to see these men as they were. She dragged her eyes away from them with an effort, and encountered the doctor's level gaze. He said nothing then, but presently, when the party was over, and he strolled with Mary to where the car waited, he said in his measured way: "You mustn't let your good sense get swamped by that kind of nonsense, Mary."
Startled, she countered by saying defensively: "I don't know what you mean!"
"Yes, I think you do. Don't be disgusted with Ermyntrude. People of intellect - that's you, my dear - are always inclined to be a little less than just to quite simple women."
She gave a constrained laugh. "I'm sorry if my face gave me away so badly. I don't like farmyard imitations."
He smiled, but shook his head. She added contritely: "That was abominably coarse of me. I didn't mean to be rude about Aunt Ermy. I'm really very fond of her. You are, too, aren't you?"
He looked a little surprised, but replied at once: "Yes, I'm fond of her. She was very good to me once."
"Oh! I didn't know," said Mary, feeling that she had stepped on to thin ice.
They had reached the car by this time. Mary got in beside Ermyntrude, and they were driven slowly back to Palings. Ermyntrude, commenting on the sultriness of thc wcatlicr, lost her resemblance to a purring cat; but when she began presently to discuss the circumstances of Wally's having been shot at, Mary was again conscious of a vague disquiet. She accused herself of distorting Ermyntrude's remarks until they seemed to express an unacknowledged sense of frustration, and made haste to introduce another topic of conversation.
She was surprised to find that Vicky had returned to Palings before them, and was lying in a hammock slung in the shade of a great elm tree on the south lawn. Ermyntrude had gone up to her bedroom to rest before tea, and so did not encounter her daughter, but Mary saw her from the drawing-room window, and went out to ask what had brought the picnic to such an early end.
Vicky, who apparently considered the weather hot enough to make the wearing of a beach-suit desirable, crossed her arms under her honey-coloured head, and said in an exhausted voice: "Oh, darling, I found he was going to read to me, and it seemed to me as though there would probably be ants, or anyway thistles, because there always are whenever I lie on the ground. I do think all this healing-Mother-Earth racket is too utterly spurious, don't you? And it was definitely not one of my primeval days, so I said we'd go home."