“Oh, Mortimer, please don’t call me that. I can’t bear it!”
She hid her face in the keyboard and sobbed violently.
“Hysterical!” said the aunt, still smiling. “I don’t wonder, after the conversation we have been having, and the things we have been hearing! Fibby’s had grand new London friends here--to put her out of love with us all. We’re all too plain and common for Fibby now!”
Still smiling--was a smile ever so denuded of grace and benevolence?--she gathered up her crochet and left the room. Mrs. Elles then rose from the piano, and, dabbing her handkerchief to her eyes, made a step in the direction of the door. But she changed her mind and stood still by the mantelpiece with the figure half averted.
“I’m sure I beg all your pardons,” she murmured, almost inaudibly. “Oh, damn! where’s the paper?” said Mortimer Elles. Securing it, and sinking into an arm-chair with a great, puffing breath, he hid his face behind the broad white sheet. His coat tails caught the Oriental cloth on a small table near him and dragged it nearly off. Mrs. Elles rushed forward and saved one of the many pieces of china that rested on it from destruction.
“Throw the beastly thing on the fire!” he growled out, without looking up. “This house is far too full.”
“I am going up to dress for dinner,” she said, aggressively, standing in front of him. “Shan’t you, Mortimer?”
“No--unfortunately--but I like to dress.”
“Dress if you like, but don’t bother me!”
“Oh, I do wonder what you married me for, Mortimer?” she complained with plaintive savageness.
“I do wish you wouldn’t talk nonsense!” he answered. “What has marriage to do with dressing for dinner?”
“Perhaps more than you think,” she murmured still in a low key, as she walked past him and opened the door. She crossed the hall slowly, like a somnambulist. It was true the conversation of Egidia and of the poet, who was no fool, and who had been brought out by the tact of the London woman, had set her thinking, and her mind travelling in a new direction. She trod on her gown going upstairs, and picked it up with the tragically careless gesture of a Joan of Arc going to the stake. She made herself the effect of a prisoner in a strange land--an alien princess in the hands of the Saracens--the Lady of “Comus” among the rabble rout. She was a delicate piece of porcelain among rough earthenware pots--a harp played upon by unknowing boors. She muttered to herself phrases of philosophy and resignation that she did not feel--her whole soul was in revolt against the conditions of her life.