Tea relaxed the tension; but made intimate conversation no easier. Between them and their old intimacy rose--as it seemed--insurmountable barriers. It was Mollie who, involuntarily, pulled those barriers down.
"I say," she asked abruptly, "isn't Hector going to do anything?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Doesn't it make you frightfully unhappy?"
"Only for Ronnie's sake."
Mollie did her best to restrain indignation. Woman-like, she could not help blaming Ronnie for the whole occurrence. Girl-like, she could not quite divine the immensity of passion behind her sister's steady eyes; till, somehow infected by that passion, her thoughts veered to James. Suppose James had been married. Married to a lunatic, say, or a drunkard? Tied to some rotten wife, for instance, a wife who made him unhappy? Suppose that James had said to her, "Mollie, let's cut the painter"?
And suddenly Mollie's indignation passed, leaving her contrite.
"Alie," she said, "I ought to have come up to town before. I oughtn't to have left you alone all this time. I'm afraid I've been"--she faltered--"rather a beast about the whole thing."
"You haven't." Aliette came across to the sofa, and took her sister's hand. "It's been simply wonderful of you to forgive our thoughtlessness, our lack of consideration----"
"Oh, that!" interrupted Mollie. "I wasn't thinking about that." She fell silent; and again, to her contrite mind, the romance of Aliette and Ronnie assumed a personal significance.