The large drawing-room presented but another aspect of the bareness of the rest of the house. In times probably long past, possibly in the Dowager Lady Anstruthers' early years of marriage, the walls had been hung with white and gold paper of a pattern which dominated the scene, and had been furnished with gilded chairs, tables, and ottomans. Some of these last had evidently been removed as they became too much out of repair for use or ornament. Such as remained, tarnished as to gilding and worn in the matter of upholstery, stood sparsely scattered on a desert of carpet, whose huge, flowered medallions had faded almost from view.
Lady Anstruthers, looking shy and awkward as she fingered an ornament on a small table, seemed singularly a part of her background. Her evening dress, slipping off her thin shoulders, was as faded and out of date as her carpet. It had once been delicately blue and gauzy, but its gauziness hung in crushed folds and its blue was almost grey. It was also the dress of a girl, not that of a colourless, worn woman, and her consciousness of its unfitness showed in her small-featured face as she came forward.
“Do you--recognise it, Betty?” she asked hesitatingly. “It was one of my New York dresses. I put it on because--because----” and her stammering ended helplessly.
“Because you wanted to remind me,” Betty said. If she felt it easier to begin with an excuse she should be provided with one.
Perhaps but for this readiness to fall into any tone she chose to adopt Rosy might have endeavoured to carry her poor farce on, but as it was she suddenly gave it up.
“I put it on because I have no other,” she said. “We never have visitors and I haven't dressed for dinner for so long that I seem to have nothing left that is fit to wear. I dragged this out because it was better than anything else. It was pretty once----” she gave a little laugh, “twelve years ago. How long years seem! Was I--was I pretty, Betty--twelve years ago?”
“Twelve years is not such a long time.” Betty took her hand and drew her to a sofa. “Let us sit down and talk about it.”
“There is nothing much to talk about. This is it----” taking in the room with a wave of her hand. “I am it. Ughtred is it.”