“Yes.”
VIII
A thought may be a link; it may also be a barrier.
Elsie Carston grew restless. It was all very well that Diana should go to London to have a good time, but the season in London was over. There was nothing left for Diana to do but find the streets hot and the parks empty. To be with Mr. Maitland could not in any way be called a pleasure. Diana was wonderfully loyal to her uncle. Elsie was glad of that. She wouldn’t have had the child otherwise, but that it was loyalty that prevented her really saying what she thought of him, she knew. It could be nothing else. She was glad she had said to Diana when she had left for London: “Now, Diana, remember, whatever you think of your uncle, you mustn’t say it—even to me. He means to be very kind.”
Diana had implicitly obeyed her aunt. Loyally she had persisted that he was a dear. Elsie, of course, knew he could not be that, but she knew that uncles with money are people to propitiate—one cannot afford to treat them as they should be treated.
“When’s Diana comin’?” asked Shan’t, at breakfast, over the edge of her porridge-bowl.
“That was just what I was wondering, Shan’t.”
“Why do you wonder?”
“Yes, exactly; why, my child?”
“Why?”