It seemed to her as she turned slowly and went home that that same Woman who had encountered life, had taken it all and tasted every danger, now, watching her, laughed at her for her wasted, barren days....
By the time, however, that she reached Garth she had recovered her spirits; it was the sea that had made her melancholy. She walked into the house with the firm step of anticipated triumph. She went up to her bedroom, took off her bonnet, washed her face and hands, peeped out on to the drive as though she expected to see someone watching there, then came down into the drawing-room.
She had intended to speak to her sister-in-law in private. It happened, however, that, on going to the tea-table, she discovered that the tea had been standing for a considerable period, and nobody apparently intended to order any more—at the same time a twinge in her left jaw told her that it had been foolish of her to sit on that rock so long.
Then Philip, who had the unfortunate habit of trying to be friendly at the precisely wrong moment, said, cheerfully:
“Been for a walk all alone, Aunt Aggie?”
She always hated that he should call her Aunt Aggie. To-day it seemed a most aggravated insult.
“Yes,” she said. “You’ve had tea very early.”
“George wanted it,” said Mrs. Trenchard, who was writing at a little table near a window that opened into the sunlit garden. “One never can tell with you, Aggie, what time you’ll like it—never can tell, surely.”
There! as though that weren’t directly charging her with being a trouble to the household. Because they’d happened to have it early!
“I call it very unfair—” she began nibbling a piece of bread and butter.