As for friends, when Gwen began to cast about in her mind on that subject, she found that for her, putting aside Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes, none existed. Of the girl friends who usually flock in the wake of a bride, Gwen hadn’t a vestige.
She had gone to her room to straighten her thoughts after a hot encounter with Dacre, whose carnal mind still hankered after a proper full-blown wedding, and had been making itself objectionable in a bumptious youthful style. She had lost her cool scornful calm at last, and had given him such a glance from her big eyes as had quelled the British lion in him, and had accompanied it with a lash of her able tongue.
“Oh, you are anxious to amuse yourself by importing the world and the flesh down here—here! that they may sneer at two people who, if they have brought children into the world for pure purposes of investigation, are at any rate too good to make sport for your friends. You can get your world and your flesh elsewhere, not here at my expense.”
“I never saw anyone just going to be married like you before!” said Dacre, with a dash of his old astonished terror at her.
“Probably not, your experience not being wide.”
“Strange is a million times too good for you!”
To his astonishment he got no immediate retort.
Gwen stood up, getting rather white, and went to the door. She stopped in the shadow of the threshold, and a gray shade fell on her face and made it whiter, but a sunbeam caught her hair and turned it to the orange-gold that Dacre hated.
“Fools speak the truth a great deal oftener than they have any notion of,” she said, “it is a pity that being thick-headed themselves they can’t know how it hurts.”
Now she was in her room reflecting gloomily on things in general.