"Well, why don't you get some decent sleep? You racket about and overtax your strength and excite yourself.… And this is the result!"
"I'll do my best, father."
As he creaked out of the room, she shut her eyes tight and tried in despair to woo herself back to the moment of half-consciousness when Eric drew her cloak across her chest and she roused to ask him sleepily "Am I coming undressed?"
2
Barbara rang for tea at noon and came down to luncheon in a house which was gratifyingly demoralized by her absence. Her father had spent Sunday morning in his study, writing letters; her mother had carried the more devout members of the party to mass and from mass to a vague, bored exploration of the garden, where they could be seen scattered on the lowest terrace, trying to make friends with an unresponsive peacock; the men, headed by Pentyre, were warmly entrenched round the smoking-room fire in a blue tobacco-haze and a litter of Sunday papers. George Oakleigh, in naval uniform, was unashamedly sleeping in a deep window-embrasure, his mouth open and his eyeglasses on his knees. Deganway and Carstairs were arguing in subdued tones and seemed as vacantly uninterested as Pentyre, who had exhausted the feuilleton of his paper and was studying the advertisements.
She was pleased by the stir with which her entrance galvanized them into alertness, by Oakleigh's sympathetic enquiries, even by Deganway's critical examination of her dress.
"Well, make the most of me, everybody," she said. "I'm going back to bed immediately after lunch. What's everybody doing?"
"I've been asleep," Oakleigh answered contentedly.
Barbara looked round her and wrinkled her nose.
"What are you going to do?" she pursued.