Letty, who was looking over George's shoulder, gave a little cry of dismay.
Then, to avoid the butler's eyes and ears, they turned hurriedly into
George's smoking-room which opened off the hall, and shut the door.
"George! she has come to get more money out of you!" cried Letty, anger and annoyance written in every line of her little frowning face.
"Well, darling, she can't get blood out of a stone!" said George, crushing the telegram in his hand and throwing it away. "It is a little too bad of my mother, I think, to spoil our honeymoon time like this. However, it can't be helped. Will you tell them to get her room ready?"
CHAPTER IX
"Now, my dear George! I do think I may claim at least that you should remember I am your mother!"—the speaker raised a fan from her knee, and used it with some vehemence. "Of course I can't help seeing that you don't treat me as you ought to do. I don't want to complain of Letty—I daresay she was taken by surprise—but all I can say as to her reception of me last night is, that it wasn't pretty—that's all; it wasn't pretty. My room felt like an ice-house—Justine tells me nobody has slept there for months—and no fire until just the moment I arrived; and—and no flowers on the dressing-table—no little attentions, in fact. I can only say it was not what I am accustomed to. My feelings overcame me; that poor dear Justine will tell you what a state she found me in. She cried herself, to see me so upset."
Lady Tressady was sitting upright on the straight-backed sofa of George's smoking-room. George, who was walking up and down the room, thought, with discomfort, as he glanced at her from time to time, that she looked curiously old and dishevelled. She had thrown a piece of white lace round her head, in place of the more elaborate preparation for the world's gaze that she was wont to make. Her dress—a study in purples—had been a marvel, but was now old, and even tattered; the ruffles at her wrist were tumbled; and the pencilling under her still fine eyes had been neglected. George, between his wife's dumb anger and his mother's folly, had passed through disagreeable times already since Lady Tressady's arrival, and was now once more endeavouring to get to the bottom of her affairs.
"You forget, mother," he said, in answer to Lady Tressady's complaint, "that the house is not mounted for visitors, and that you gave us very short notice."
Nevertheless he winced inwardly as he spoke at the thought of Letty's behaviour the night before.
Lady Tressady bridled.