But Lady Barnes stopped him, not without dignity. "Better not press it, Roger: another time."
Barnes laughed, and yielded. He carried the child away, murmuring to her, "Naughty, naughty 'ittie girl!"--a remark which Beatty, tucked under his ear, and complacently sucking her thumb, received with complete indifference.
"There, you see!" said the grandmother, with slightly flushed cheeks, as the door closed: "the child has been already taught to dislike me, and if Roger had attempted to kiss me, she would probably have struck me."
"Oh, no!" cried Mrs. French. "She is a loving little thing."
"Except when she is jealous," said Lady Barnes, with significance. "I told you she has inherited more than her eyes."
Mrs. French rose. She was determined not to discuss her hostess any more, and she walked over to the bow window as though to look at the prospects of the weather, which had threatened rain. But Roger's mother was not to be repressed. Resentment and antagonism, nurtured on a hundred small incidents and trifling jars, and, to begin with, a matter of temperament, had come at last to speech. And in this charming New Englander, the wife of Roger's best friend, sympathetic, tender, with a touch in her of the nun and the saint, Lady Barnes could not help trying to find a supporter. She was a much weaker person than her square build and her double chin would have led the bystander to suppose; and her feelings had been hurt.
So that when Mrs. French returned to say that the sun seemed to be coming out, her companion, without heeding, went on, with emotion: "It's my son I am thinking of, Mrs. French. I know you're safe, and that Roger depends upon Mr. French more than upon anyone else in the world, so I can't help just saying a word to you about my anxiety. You know, when Roger married, I don't think he was much in love--in fact, I'm sure he wasn't. But now--it's quite different. Roger has a very soft heart, and he's very domestic. He was always the best of sons to me, and as soon as he was married he became the best of husbands. He's devoted to Daphne now, and you see how he adores the child. But the fact is, there's a person in this neighbourhood" (Lady Barnes lowered her voice and looked round her)--"I only knew it for certain this morning--who ... well, who might make trouble. And Daphne's temper is so passionate and uncontrolled that----"