She sat up and dried her eyes viciously. Why was she making a fright of herself? She had always laughed at women that cried and spoiled their eyes. He was not yet married to Fanny. Why should she not pretend to release him, then subtly reënter the lists and win him again? How could any girl survive in a close contest with a woman still young and beautiful, and with experience and knowledge of men? But she stirred uneasily. She had seen the automatic triumphs of girls more than once. Nature was always on their side.
She fell back on the ground with a sensation of despair. “Oh, what shall I do?” she thought in terror. “Have I come to this? How shall I live?”
But she sat up again in a few moments and deliberately composed herself, ordering her powerful will to rise and perform its office. She must return to the house before her mother sent servants in search of her, and her eyes must not be red. Nor her hair look as if she had tried to tear it out by the roots. She took down the braids, smoothed them with her hands, pinned them up, and pushed the short locks under her hat.
Her mother. She had risen to her feet, but stood staring out over the waving cane. Why had she given Fanny this sudden liberty, and not three hours after announcing her decision, with all the force of her obstinate old will, that Fanny should never marry, never be permitted even to meet, a young man? And why had she insisted that Julia remain at her side throughout her entire visit? Never was there a less sentimental woman. And the conversation at the dinner-table last night? It sprang vividly from her memory. She saw Fanny’s face, flushed, arrogant, anxious, her aunt’s faint satiric smile, heard her covert words of warning.
What a blind fool she had been.
“So,” she thought grimly. “We are all the victims of a plot, and one quite worthy of my mother. I have been managed as easily as if I had but a teaspoonful of brains in my head. And so has he. Idiots! Idiots!” And she hated everybody on earth.
She walked rapidly home, slipped into the house unobserved, bathed her eyes, until the outer signs of the most tempestuous hour of her life were obliterated, powdered the black rings under her eyes, and made a satisfactory appearance at the lunch table. Neither Mrs. Winstone nor Fanny was present. Mrs. Edis talked of naught but Suffrage.
“Great heaven!” thought Julia. “That I should live to hate the word!”
XI
After luncheon, she told her mother that the sun had given her a headache, and that it was likely she should be obliged to go to bed for the rest of the day; she had no intention of appearing at dinner. Her own room seemed the one bearable spot on earth, and she was grateful that it was far from the other bedrooms, at the opposite end of the long house.