He put forward a chair for her with the tolerance of an amiable gentleman of the world. She took it without thanking him, her cold, colorless face masking an instinctive repulsion, an impatience that his urbanity seemed fated to inspire. The lord and the lady exchanged glances. It was as though the girl had brought a frost with her into the midst of June. Her silence and her almost sullen apathy embarrassed them. It was like being in the presence of a statue that had eyes and ears but no tongue. Anne Purcell clapped her book to, and jerked it aside on to an oak table. “Where did you drive—in the park?” “Drive?” “Good lack! girl, are you torpid? I could swear you have not noticed the color of a gown or the set of a hat. One might as well send out a mummy.” She glanced unconcernedly at the buckles on my lord’s shoes. “The park? Yes. A great business there, to see—and to be seen. Enough dust to stifle one; and too many people.” The words were the perfunctory words of one who would rather have remained silent. Her face seemed vacant and expressionless. My lord drew in a deep breath through his nostrils, and regarded her with philosophic pity. “Eheu, holy Gemini, dust and ashes—at two-and-twenty!” He nodded his head benignantly, yet with a cynical curving of the mouth, while the plump, well-complexioned mother studied her bantling with irritable contempt. There was some inherent antipathy between these two. Their attitude was one of vague distrust, as though the sun and the moon found themselves in miraculous juxtaposition at mid-day. “You had better go to bed, girl; you look tired enough.” She met her mother’s hard, inquisitive stare, and seemed to stiffen at it with a sensitive hatred of being watched. “No, I am not tired.” “Fiddlesticks!” My lord held up a bland white hand ruffled in Mechlin, immaculate to the finger-tips. “Let her alone, Anne. These feather moods need a south wind.” His lofty compunction repelled her more than her mother’s brusque contempt. The atmosphere of the room seemed overburdened with a sensuous flavor. The very roses suggested a rank and vivid worldliness, a fulsomeness of the flesh gotten of meat and wine. She rose, pushing back her chair, with a languid drooping of the lids. “Tell Jael to have supper sent to my room. Shall you be late to-night?” Her face was turned toward her mother, as though the gentleman in the periwig were a mere negligible shadow. “Go to bed, child, and don’t trouble your head about healthy people. Nell is at The King’s to-night. I wish you could catch some of the wench’s devil.” “Oh—the Drury Lane woman! I have seen her at her window in her night-dress shouting at Moll Davis in the next house. She looked something of a drab with her hair done up in papers. Do the candles make such a difference?”