She would have said as much to a casual acquaintance, Henry thought.
"Not well!" he heard Ninian saying. "What's the matter with her?"
"She's tired. I think she's got a headache. There was a letter from Uncle Peter!" Mary answered, and her tone indicated that the letter from Uncle Peter accounted for everything.
"Oh!" said Ninian, scowling and turning away.
They went into the drawing-room to tea, and Henry had a sense of intruding on family affairs, mingled with his disappointment because Mary was not as he had expected her to be. It might be, of course, that the letter from Uncle Peter had affected Mary almost as much as it seemed to have affected Mrs. Graham, and that presently she would be as natural as she had been that other time ... but then he remembered that Gilbert had said that she was "being very femaley at present." She poured out tea for them as if she were a new governess, and she reproved Ninian once for saying "Damn!" when he dropped his bread and butter....
"Mary's turned pi!" said Ninian.
She frowned at him and told him not to be silly.
"She calls the Communion Service the Eucharist, and crosses herself and flops and bows!..."
"You're very absurd, Ninian!" she said.
Almost unconsciously, he began to compare her to Sheila Morgan. He remembered the free, natural ways of Sheila, and liked them better than these new, mannered ways of Mary. How could any one prefer this stiltedness to that ease, this self-consciousness to that state of being unaware of self?... In Belfast, when he had left John Marsh, and in his loneliness had thought of the way Sheila had humiliated him, he had had a sharp sense of revulsion from her, a loathing for her, a desire never to see her again; but now, sitting here looking at Mary and oppressed by her youngladyishness, his longing for Sheila came back to him with greater strength, and he resolved that he would write to her that night and beg her to forgive him for his cowardice and let him be her sweetheart again....