After everything had been settled she found herself the richer by a sum of sixty-eight pounds odd. She kept the eight odd and put the sixty in a bank. It struck her as rather ironical that she should benefit by her father’s death. Yet somebody had to have the money, so it might as well be she. With the eight pounds she bought herself some pretty dresses. For the first time in her life she could afford to put the question, “Will it look nice?” before “Will it wear well?” She experienced the keen joy of dressing from the artistic rather than from the strictly utilitarian point of view. She did not believe in “mourning”: her first dresses were reddish brown to match her hair, and white to throw her hair into vivid contrast. Always it was her hair that had to be considered....
When you saw her dressed up you would certainly not call her pretty, but you might confess to a sort of attractiveness....
CHAPTER X
ACCELERANDO
§ 1
SHE waited fully ten minutes in the drawing-room at “Claremont.” “Mr. Verreker will be here directly,” the maid had said, and Catherine had time to look about her. It was a lovely May evening: the windows were wide open at the bottom, and from the garden came the rich cloying scent of wallflowers. Somebody was working a lawn-mower.
He came in two minutes after the sound of the lawn-mower had ceased. There were scraps of grass about the fringes of his trousers.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he announced briskly.
“Don’t mention it,” she murmured, with perhaps a trace of sarcasm.
“I oughtn’t to, really, ought I?” he then said, “since you kept me waiting an hour last Saturday.”
She said nothing, but the atmosphere was definitely hostile.