She did as she was bidden. The sharp kindliness of Barnaby's mother was sweet to her; and it was the last time she would sit with her, the last time she would listen with a smile that was not far from tears to her caustic prattle. Whatever happened to her, however they managed her disappearance, she and Lady Henrietta would never meet again. Would she think of her sometimes,—kindly?—She was not to know....
"What's the matter now?" said Lady Henrietta suddenly. "You look pale."
Hurriedly the girl defended herself from the imputation.
"Of course, it's Barnaby," said Lady Henrietta, undismayed. "I suppose he has been behaving badly."
"Oh no! Oh no!" cried Susan.
Lady Henrietta waved her hands impatiently. How fragile she looked, how pretty;—the pink in her cheekbones matching her painted silk peignoir. The hardness that sometimes marred her expression had softened to a pitying amusement, and she had a look of Barnaby when she smiled like that.
"You'd deny it with your last gasp," she said.
Susan was picking up and arranging the letters that were lying in disorder. It was difficult to sustain that quizzical regard. But Barnaby's mother had not finished with her. She was not to be distracted.
"You never tell me anything, either of you," she said. "What is a mother-in-law for but to rule the tempest and shoot about in the battle? It's too firmly fixed in your heads that I am a brittle thing, and whatever is raging round me I am not to be excited. And it's absurd. I don't mind having a heart,—in reason. It's amusing; a kind of trick up my sleeve. But I won't have it robbing me of my rightful flustrations.—I am as strong as a horse, if you two would realize it. And you and Barnaby are such a funny couple."
She scanned the girl's face a minute.