each other, seemed to retain the attitudes of bored talkers. Her
heart beat as she had seldom known it, but she continued to make a
pretence of looking at the pictures on the walls and the ornaments on
the tables, while she hoped that, as she preferred it, it would be
also the course her father would like best. She hoped "awfully," as
she would have said, that he wouldn't think her rude. She was a
person of courage, and he was a kind, an intensely good-natured man;
nevertheless she went in some fear of him. At home it had always
been a religion with them to be nice to the people he liked. How, in
the old days, her mother, her incomparable mother, so clever, so
unerring, so perfect, how in the precious days her mother had
practised that art! Oh her mother, her irrecoverable mother! One of
the pictures she was looking at swam before her eyes. Mrs.
Churchley, in the natural course, would have begun immediately to
climb staircases. Adela could see the high bony shoulders and the
long crimson tail and the universal coruscating nod wriggle their
horribly practical way through the rest of the night. Therefore she
MUST have had her reasons for detaining them. There were mothers who
thought every one wanted to marry their eldest son, and the girl
sought to be clear as to whether she herself belonged to the class of
daughters who thought every one wanted to marry their father. Her
companions left her alone; and though she didn't want to be near them
it angered her that Mrs. Churchley didn't call her. That proved she
was conscious of the situation. She would have called her, only
Colonel Chart had perhaps dreadfully murmured "Don't, love, don't."
This proved he also was conscious. The time was really not long--ten
minutes at the most elapsed--when he cried out gaily, pleasantly, as
if with a small jocular reproach, "I say, Adela, we must release this
dear lady!" He spoke of course as if it had been Adela's fault that
they lingered. When they took leave she gave Mrs. Churchley, without