Teresa had a sudden vision of the sinful couch (according to the Doña’s views) of Concha and Rory, infested by the dead: “I say, Concha, what a frightful bore! They ought to have given us a mosquito-net.” “Oh Lord! Well, never mind—I’m simply _dropping_ with sleep.” And so to bed, comfortably mattressed by the shrouds of the “holy people of God.”
She went up and tried the Doña’s door, but found it locked. She felt that she ought next to go to Concha, upon whom, she told herself, all this was very hard—that she, who had merely set out upon the flowery path that had been made by the feet of myriads and myriads of other sane and happy people since the world began, should have her joy dimmed, her laughter arrested, by ghosts and other peoples’ delusions. But, though she told herself this, she could not feel any real pity; her heart was as cold as ice.
However, she went to Concha’s room, and found her sitting at her desk writing a letter—probably a long angry one to that other suffering sage, Elfrida Penn.
“Poor old Concha!” she said, “I’m sorry it should be like this for you.”
Concha—puffed up with the sense of being a symbol of a whole generation—scowled angrily: “Oh, it’s all too fantastic! Thank the Lord I’ll soon be out of all this!”
At times there was something both dour and ungracious about Concha—a complete identification of herself with the unbecoming rôles she chose to act.
Teresa found herself wondering if, after all, she herself had not more justification with regard to her than recently she had come to fear.
By the middle of March, Concha’s engagement had become an accepted fact: Dick and Rory’s uncle, Colonel Dundas of Drumsheugh, had exchanged letters; the marriage was fixed for the beginning of July; wedding presents had already begun to drift in.
Even the Doña began to be hypnotised by the inevitable, and to find a little balm in the joys of the trousseau.
In Parker’s sewing-room little scenes like this would take place: “No, Concha, I _won’t_ allow you to have them so low. You might as well be stark naked.”
Then Parker would giggle, and Concha, after a good-natured “Good Lord!” would say, “I tell you, Doña, they’re always _worn_ like that now.”
“Oh, _darling_! I believe you’d like me to borrow one of Jollypot’s as a pattern—they’re flannel and up to her ears, and the sleeves reach down to her nails.”