"Oh, Connie, I'm awfully sorry. I——"
"Are you? Do you hear that, Mother? Muriel's awfully sorry. It's more than Mother is. Mother's awfully angry, because I let Bobby Collins drag me in to the party, which I couldn't help. And she's angry because I'm going to make this family not respectable, but she isn't sorry."
"That's not true, Connie," came the stifled voice from the sofa.
"She's always brought us up to have such high ideals, you see," Connie continued, in her high, hard tone, ignoring her mother's protest. "She liked us to have a good influence over the young men, so that Lady Grainger would be awfully grateful to her, didn't you, Mother? And you wouldn't let us work or go away, or have any other interests, because you were afraid of our spoiling a chance of a good marriage. And if we didn't get partners at dances we were beastly failures. And if our friends attracted more attention than we did they were sent away. And it was all because of our healthy homely influence, wasn't it, Mother? And now that one of us has taken the only means she saw to fulfil your wishes and get married, and it hasn't come oft, you're very angry, aren't you, but you aren't sorry, and if I'd been successful, you wouldn't have been angry, would you, Mother?"
As though Connie would strike her, Mrs. Hammond held up her hand against her face. Her small figure rocked backwards and forwards on the sofa in comfortless distress.
"If I'd been like Muriel," cried Connie, "I'd have sat at home perhaps and waited for things to happen. But I wasn't like that. I wasn't made to spend my life sewing for the G.F.S. If you wanted your daughters to be perfect ladies, why did you marry Father? You knew what he was like!"
"Connie! Be quiet. You shan't speak like that. Oh, what shall I do? The shame, the shame! Connie. Don't take it like this. I didn't know . . . I couldn't . . ."
As though it had been broken, the delicate mask of prettiness fell from her. Uncaring for the crushed silk of her new grey dinner frock, she flung herself forward among the cushions of the sofa, utterly defeated.
Muriel sat as though frozen, helplessly watching.
The front door shut with a clang. There was the sound of a key being turned. A bolt was shot. Mr. Hammond's voice hummed cheerfully: