Gertrude's eyebrows rose, unconsciously. She herself was never late for an 8:30 breakfast, and never went to bed till long after midnight. The ways of Delia, who varied between too little sleep and the long nights of fatigue, seemed to her self-indulgent.
After her letters had been put aside and the ordinary newspapers, she took up a new number of the Tocsin. The first page was entirely given up to an article headed "How LONG?" She read it with care, her delicate mouth tightening a little. She herself had suggested the lines of it a few days before, to the Editor, and her hints had been partially carried out. It gave a scathing account of Sir Wilfrid's course on the suffrage question—of his earlier coquettings with the woman's cause, his defection and "treachery," the bitter and ingenious hostility with which he was now pursuing the Bill before the House of Commons. "An amiable, white-haired nonentity for the rest of the world—who only mention him to marvel that such a man was ever admitted to an English Cabinet—to us he is the 'smiler with the knife,' the assassin of the hopes of women, the reptile in the path. The Bill is weakening every day in the House, and on the night of the second reading it will receive its 'coup de grace' from the hand of Sir Wilfrid Lang. Women of England—how long!—"
Gertrude pushed the newspaper aside in discontent. Her critical sense was beginning to weary of the shrieking note. And the descent from the "assassin of the hopes of women" to "the reptile in the path" struck her as a silly bathos.
Suddenly, a reverie—a waking dream—fell upon her, a visionary succession of sights and sounds. A dying sunset—and a rising wind, sighing through dense trees—old walls—the light from a kitchen window—voices in the distance—the barking of a dog….
"Oh Gertrude!—how late I am!"
Delia entered hurriedly, with an anxious air.
"I should have been down long ago, but Weston had one of her attacks, and I have been looking after her."
Weston was Delia's maid who had been her constant companion for ten years. She was a delicate nervous woman, liable to occasional onsets of mysterious pain, which terrified both herself and her mistress, and had hitherto puzzled the doctor.
Gertrude received the news with a passing concern.
"Better send for France, if you are worried. But I expect it will be soon over."