“However,” thought Lee, curling herself down in the hope of a nap, “I can hold my own, that is one comfort. Thank Heaven, I have been brought up all my life to think myself somebody, and that I have plenty of money; it would be tragic if I were a timid, nervous, portionless little person.”
She heard a light step, and the agreeable sibilation of linings and flounces. In a second she had run to the mirror in her bedroom. Her hair was smooth, and the wrapper of white camel’s hair and blue velvet sufficiently enhancing. There was colour in her cheeks, and the only suggestion of fatigue came from a vague shadow beneath her lashes. She felt that she had nothing to fear from the critical eyes of the other woman.
“May I come in?” Lady Barnstaple had rapped and opened the door simultaneously. “How do you do? Are you tired? You look abominably fresh. And how tall you are! I thought you’d be in a wrapper, so I didn’t send for you. Lie down again, and I’ll sit here. These chairs are stuffed with bricks.”
She was a short woman, with a still beautiful figure above the waist; it was growing massive below. Her colouring was nondescript, but her features must once have been delicate and piquant; now they were sharp, and there were fine lines about the eyes, and weak determined mouth. Her cheeks were charmingly painted, her hair elaborately coiffed; she wore an airy tea-gown of black chiffon, with pink bows, in which she looked like a smart fluffy doll. Her carriage, short as she was, would have been impressive had it not been for the restlessness of her manner. If she had come to England with a Chicago accent, she had sent it home long since. Her voice was abrupt and unpleasing, but its syllabic presentment was wholly English, and her manner was curiously like an Englishwoman’s affectation of American animation. Her eyes, for some time after she entered the room, had the round vacant stare of a newly-arrived infant. When the exigencies of conversation removed this stare, they flashed with the nervous irritable domineering character of the woman. It was some time before they were removed from Lee’s face for an instant. Lee was tired, but she obeyed the instinct of the savage who scents a fight, and sat upright.
“You won’t stay in this hole, of course—one might as well live in a dungeon—there is one at the bottom of the tower, for that matter. In the only letter that Cecil condescended to write me after his engagement, he said he wanted his old rooms to be ready for him, and he hoped I wouldn’t put any guests in them. But of course you can’t stand them. Fancy not being able to turn round without falling over a man! You’d be at each other’s throats in a week.”
“Isn’t there another room underneath these that I could fix up as a sitting-room? I like this tower.”
“Fancy, now! I believe there is a lumber-room, or something; but what can you do with a tower-room with walls five feet thick, and such windows? Of course I don’t know your tastes, but I must have fluffy airy things in bright colours about me, and floods of light—through pink shades, nowadays,” she added, with a bitter little laugh. “What a lovely complexion you have! I had one too, once, but it’s gone!—it’s gone! I don’t know whether I’m pleased or not that you’re a beauty. Barnstaple assured me that it was impossible you could be, that Cecil must be mad—the English children are so pretty; but I thought it unlikely that Cecil would sacrifice his chances of a fortune for anything less than downright beauty. Of course you’ll be a great card for me. I can make out a lot of you; but on the other hand it’s disgusting having anything so fresh forever at one’s elbow. Repose is not the fashion now, and of course you are a bit of a prude—young married women who are in love with their husbands are always so fiercely virtuous!—and of course you haven’t half enough money; but I can see that you will be a success. We all know that you’re clever, and they like clever people over here, and your voice isn’t nasal—it’s really lovely. It’s a thousand pities—a thousand pities that you couldn’t bring Cecil a fortune!” Her voice gave a sudden querulous break. “He could have had one—probably a dozen—for the asking, and I think the Abbey should have been his first consideration. He won’t inherit a penny from Barnstaple, and Heaven knows what I’ll have left! He can’t possibly keep it up on what you and he have together—your house in town will take every penny—and he’ll either have to break the entail and sell it, or rent the moor, and cut the rest up into farms, and perhaps let the Abbey itself. I should turn in my grave, for the Abbey is the one real love of my life—”
Her restless eyes had been moving about the room; they suddenly met her daughter-in-law’s. Lee had very beautiful eyes, but they were capable of a blue-hot flame of passion at times. Lady Barnstaple blinked rapidly; her own seemed scorching under that blue-fire.
“Oh, of course, it doesn’t signify! Nothing really signifies in this world. I really didn’t mean to be nasty, but I always flare up when the Abbey is in question—and then that old superstition!—But bother! I really want to be nice! Do tell me about your clothes. If you had sent me a lining I could have ordered everything for you in Paris. I shouldn’t have minded running over a bit.”
“My things were made in New York, and will probably answer.”