"I'll lie down and rest and then see how I feel. I'll go now. Nice to be with you again, dearest Madre!"
She bent down and kissed her mother's cheek. The touch of her lips just then was not quite pleasant to Mrs. Mansfield. When she was in her bedroom alone, Charmian took off her hat, and, without touching her hair, looked long and earnestly into the glass that stood on her dressing-table. Then she bent down and put her face close to the glass.
"I look dreadful!" was her comment.
Her maid knocked at the door and was sent away. Charmian undressed herself, got into bed, and lay very still. She felt very interesting, and as if she were going to be involved in interesting and strange events, as if destiny were at work, and were selecting instruments to help on the coming of that which had to be. She thought of her mother as one of these instruments.
It was strange that her mother should have been moved to ask Claude Heath, the man she meant to marry, to come to the house alone on the evening of her return. This action was not a very natural one on her mother's part. It had always been tacitly understood that Heath was Mrs. Mansfield's friend. Yet Mrs. Mansfield had invited him for her daughter. Had thought, for which space does not exist, reached across the sea from child to mother mysteriously, saying to the mother, "Do this!"
But unless the glass told a new tale at seven o'clock Charmian did not mean to go down to dinner.
She closed her eyes and said to herself, again and again, "Look better! Look better! Look better!"