“Plague take this tie!” he growled, making use of one or two un-Parliamentary expressions. Then he saw his mother and apologized.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, mother. Where’s Clare?”
Mrs. Heywood answered her son gloomily.
“I think she’s gone to church again.”
“Again?” said Herbert Heywood. “Why, dash it all—I beg your pardon, mother—she’s always going to church now. What’s the attraction?”
“I think she must be unwell,” said Mrs. Hey-wood. “I’ve thought so for some time.”
“Oh, nonsense! She’s perfectly fit.... See if you can tie this bow, mother.”
Mrs. Heywood endeavored to do so, and during the process her son showed great impatience and made irritable grimaces. But he returned to the subject of his wife.
“Perhaps her nerves are a bit wrong. Women are nervy creatures.... Oh, hang it all, mother, don’t strangle me!... As I tell her, what’s the good of having a park at your front door—Oh, thanks, that’s better.”
He looked at himself in the glass, and dabbed his face with a handkerchief.