Lady Jane laughs.
“She doesn’t appreciate Bertram or his shirts. What right has he, with his principles, to wear lawn shirts? He ought to wear hemp.”
Cicely traces patterns on the gravel with her sunshade.
“I should like to see the girl.”
“Why? You may be sure she is a little horror.”
“I am sure she is a very good girl,” says Cicely. “I am sure she is a very good girl. A person must be good that lives amongst flowers.”
“Florists are not all saints,” replies Lady Jane, out of patience; “and it does not seem an exalted mission to make button-holes for mashers. There is not even the excuse of good looks for Bertram’s aberration. She is quite a plain little thing, Marlow says.”
“Let us take another turn,” says Cicely. “We shall see the children again.”
Bertram returns from his visit to Folliott and Hake at two o’clock that day. He intended going down into the country to a friend’s house—a friend who buys Whistlers, adores Mallarme and Verlaine, writes studies on the pointillistes, and has published a volume of five hundred pages on Strindberg—but he feels indisposed for even that sympathetic society. He sends a telegram to excuse himself, and opens his own door with his latch-key.
His rooms are en suite, one out of another, and from the door-mat he can see through all four of them, between the curtains of Eastern stuffs which he had brought home years before from Tiflis. He cannot believe in the sight which meets his eyes in the third room, which is his study.