"And is Lady Kirton quite well again?" asked Maude, helplessly, knowing she could not turn her mother out.
"She'd be well enough but for temper. She was ill, though, when they telegraphed for me; her life for three days and nights hanging on a shred. I told that fool of a Kirton before he married her that she had no constitution. I suppose you and Hart were finely disappointed to find I was not in London when you got there."
"Agreeably disappointed, I think," said Maude, languidly.
"Indeed! It's civil of you to say so."
"On account of the smallness of the house," added Maude, endeavouring to be polite. "We hardly knew how to manage in it ourselves."
"You wrote me word to take it. As to me, I can accommodate myself to any space. Where there's plenty of room, I take plenty; where there's not, I can put up with a closet. I have made Mirrable give me my old rooms here: you of course take Hart's now."
"I am very tired," said Maude. "I think I will have some tea, and go to bed."
"Tea!" shrieked the dowager. "I have not yet had dinner. And it's waiting; that's more."
"You can dine without me, mamma," she said, walking upstairs to the new rooms. The dowager stared, and followed her. There was an indescribable something in Maude's manner that she did not like; it spoke of incipient rebellion, of an influence that had been, but was now thrown off. If she lost caste once, with Maude, she knew that she lost it for ever.
"You could surely take a little dinner, Maude. You must keep up your strength, you know."