Gundred looked up from her needlework.
‘Isabel is quite attractive,’ she replied, her tone implying, ever so faintly, that it was a presumption of Mrs. Mimburn even to praise a Mortimer.
The two women sat alone in the picture-gallery, Kingston being gone on some errand to his mother, and Isabel writing letters upstairs. Of late days Gundred had begun to notice the increasing warmth of her husband’s nature, and in some strange way his affection seemed to set her at a distance from him instead of bringing him nearer. Though she had never thought twice of his night on the mountain, yet the faint chill that she had felt that evening had never since quite left her. She could find no fault in their relations, could guess no limitation in himself or her; yet now his love seemed to leave her outside his life. She felt cold and lonely—quite without reason, she knew, but yet cold and lonely she felt. Therefore she was more than usually on the defensive against the impertinences of Minne-Adélaïde.
Mrs. Mimburn noticed the implied snub.
‘Dear Kingston has a lot to say to her,’ she went on viciously. ‘He always has such a lively mind. He likes people with plenty of élan.’
‘Doesn’t he—yes?’ replied Gundred quietly, yet feeling the stab as she would certainly not have felt it a fortnight ago. The skin of her self-contentment was wearing thin. But she saw the other woman’s intention to hurt, and brought all the resources of her pride to repel the attack. ‘Isabel and my husband are the greatest friends,’ she went on. ‘I am so glad of it. She can talk to him about so many things. Sometimes she can amuse him better than I.’
Her whole splendid pride shone in the calm with which she made these admissions. It was her crowning confession of faith in her husband. And yet, as she made it, the confession hurt her. Deep down in some secret place of her heart it touched a little hidden wound.
Minne-Adélaïde saw only the rebuffing self-complacency of the speech, and was spurred to angry indiscretion by her niece’s arrogant tranquillity. ‘So wise you are, dear Gundred,’ she said, ‘to let them go about so much together. Now so many young women ride their husbands on the curb, and end by boring them to death. Not that your system has not got its dangers, dear. I wonder you are never anxious. Men are men, when all is said and done, and at your age you cannot be expected to know the horrors they are capable of.’
Gundred gazed across at her husband’s aunt with cold grey eyes.
‘You have probably been unfortunate in your experiences, Aunt Minna,’ she replied. ‘Everything depends on the set in which one lives—yes?’