And now, alone, sitting on the great square sofa, with great square chairs and massive receptacles on every side, the forlorn little figure gazed about her with a heart that sank lower and lower. She was to occupy a "dignified position in the family"? Did that mean that she was still to be treated ceremoniously as in Godfrey's life-time? That she was still to have that uneasy sense of being company which had then haunted her? Sue alone had led the way to her new abode—Maud and Sybil having vanished elsewhere—and this in itself forboded ill. She sat motionless, pondering.
In childhood the gap between herself and her elders had always been too wide to be bridged even at its nearest point, which was Sybil—but she had looked to her marriage hopefully. Then somehow, she could never quite tell how, but although she could manage to play the hostess to her sisters on apparently equal terms at Deeside, the old position remained intact at Boldero Abbey. For all her gay outward bearing, Leo was of a sensitive nature, and the girls—to herself she always called them "the girls"—had only to take a matter for granted, for her to follow their lead.
So that while it would have been joy untold to perceive the barriers withdrawn, and to have been allowed to run in and out of Maud's room and Sybil's room—she did not covet Sue's—in dressing-gown and slippers, to have brushed her hair of nights along with them and talked the talk that goes with that time-honoured procedure, Mrs. Godfrey Stubbs had no more been accorded this privilege, for which she had hungered ever since she could remember, than the little out-cast Leonore had been. Indeed, she was kept even more steadily at bay—and we will for a moment lift the veil for our readers and disclose why.
"It isn't unkind," quoth Maud, on one occasion. "I wouldn't be unkind for worlds, but it simply can't be done. Leo is no longer one of us; she belongs to the Stubby people among whom she lives,—and if we were to begin talking about them, we couldn't help letting out what we think—at least, perhaps I could, but you couldn't." It was to Syb she spoke, and Syb lifted her eyebrows.
"I daresay; I can't see any harm if I did. I should rather like to hear about the Stubby people and their queerities."
"Not from Leo's point of view. She would not see what you call their 'queerities'. She takes them all au serieux."
"Are you sure she does? She must see they are different from the people here, at all events; and——"
"How is she to see?" interrupted Maud quickly. "She never went anywhere before her marriage. She had only been to one ball, and a few cricket matches. Actually she had never once dined at a house in the neighbourhood."
"If she had, she might not have been so ready to take Godfrey. I couldn't have stood Godfrey as a husband myself, though I really don't mind him as a brother-in-law; and I think it a little hard that Leo should be tabooed."
"I tell you she isn't tabooed. It is for her own sake that it would be a pity her eyes should be opened. She has got to mix in inferior society, and why make her discontented with it?"