"Then you understand why I'm anxious? You can imagine——"
May moved her head in response, and then she suddenly turned her face towards her aunt and said in the same voice in which she had imitated Belinda before—
"If dull people like to be dull, it's no credit to 'em!"
Lady Dashwood laughed, but it was a hard bitter laugh.
"Oh, May, you understand. Well, for the twenty-four hours that Belinda was here, she was on her best behaviour. You see, she had plans! You know her habit of sponging for weeks on people—she finds herself appreciated by the 'Nouveaux Riches.' Her title appeals to them. Well, Belinda has never made a home for her one child—not she!"
Mrs. Dashwood's lips moved. "Poor child!" she said softly, and there was something in her voice that made Lady Dashwood aware of what she had momentarily forgotten in her excitement, that the arm resting on her shoulder was the arm of a woman not yet thirty, whose home had suddenly vanished. It had been riddled with bullets and left to die at the retreat from Mons.
Lady Dashwood fell into a sudden silence.
"Go on, dear Aunt Lena," said May Dashwood.
"Well, dear," said Lady Dashwood, drawing in a deep breath, "Linda got wind of my coming here to put Jim straight and she pounced down upon me like a vulture, with Gwen, asked herself for one night, and then talked of 'old days, etc.,' and how she longed for Gwen to see something of our 'old-world city.' So she simply made me keep the child for 'a couple of days,' then 'a week,' and then 'ten days'—and how could I turn the child out of doors? And so—I gave in—like a fool!" Then, after a pause, Lady Dashwood exclaimed—"Imagine Belinda as Jim's mother-in-law!"
"But why should she be?" asked May.