She glanced unconcernedly at the buckles on my lord’s shoes.
“The park? Yes. A great business there, to see—and to be seen. Enough dust to stifle one; and too many people.”
The words were the perfunctory words of one who would rather have remained silent. Her face seemed vacant and expressionless. My lord drew in a deep breath through his nostrils, and regarded her with philosophic pity.
“Eheu, holy Gemini, dust and ashes—at two-and-twenty!”
He nodded his head benignantly, yet with a cynical curving of the mouth, while the plump, well-complexioned mother studied her bantling with irritable contempt. There was some inherent antipathy between these two. Their attitude was one of vague distrust, as though the sun and the moon found themselves in miraculous juxtaposition at mid-day.
“You had better go to bed, girl; you look tired enough.”
She met her mother’s hard, inquisitive stare, and seemed to stiffen at it with a sensitive hatred of being watched.
“No, I am not tired.”
“Fiddlesticks!”
My lord held up a bland white hand ruffled in Mechlin, immaculate to the finger-tips.