She felt as though she had never been away.
No one had asked her anything about the convent, and all through tea Barbara and Archie had talked about the coming holidays, or had made allusions to events of which Alex knew nothing, but which had evidently been absorbing their attention for the last few weeks.
They seemed to Alex futile in the extreme.
Downstairs, Lady Isabel kissed her, and said, "Well, my darling, I'm very glad to have you at home again. Have you been a good girl this term, and brought back a report that will please papa?" and then had turned to speak to some one without waiting for an answer.
Alex sat beside her mother while she talked to the one remaining visitor, and felt discontented and awkward.
Barbara and Archie were looking at pictures together in the corner of the room, very quiet and well behaved. The caller stayed late, and just as she had gone Sir Francis came in from his Club, the faint, familiar smell of tobacco, and Russia leather, and expensive eau-de-Cologne that seemed to pervade him, striking Alex with a fresh sense of recognition as she rose to receive his kiss. He greeted her very kindly, but Alex was quite aware of a dissatisfaction as intense as, though less outspoken than, that of old Nurse as he put up his double eye-glasses and gazed at his eldest daughter.
"We must see if the country or the seaside will bring back some roses to your cheeks," he said in characteristic phraseology.
But when the children were dismissed from the drawing-room, Sir Francis straightened his own broad back, and tapped Alex' rounded shoulder-blades.
"Hold yourself up, my child," he said very decidedly. "I want to see a nice flat, and straight back."
He made no other criticism, and none was needed.
Alex had gauged the extent of his dismay.
"Mother, may I ask Queenie Torrance to tea?"
Alex had rehearsed the words so often to herself that they had almost become meaningless.
Her heart beat thickly with the anticipation of a refusal, when at last she found courage and opportunity to utter the little stilted phrase, with a tongue that felt dry and in a voice that broke nervously in her throat.
"What do you say, darling?" absently inquired Lady Isabel; and Alex had to say it again.