to overpower the weak, but overpower the powerful. Really it hasn’t any power: except that it need only lift a finger, and every power there is or ever could be must rise to protect it.
But that isn’t true (said the looking-glass image, going over with musing untroubled eyes the thing before it: chin, throat: gleam of a shoulder betwixt fallen masses of flame-coloured hair: arms whose curves had the motion of swans in them and the swan’s whiteness: breasts of a Greek mould and firmness, dove-like, silver-pure, pointing their rose-flowers in a Greek pride: and those wild delicate little perfections, of the like flame colour, beneath her arms): that isn’t true. And with that (perhaps for two seconds) something happened in the mirror: a two-seconds’ glimpse as of some menace that rushed upwards, like the smoke of some explosion, to yawning immensities bleak, unmeaning, unmindful of the worm that is man; into which void there seemed, for that moment, to be sucked up all comfort of cosy room, home, dear ones, gaiety of youthful blood, the sweet nostalgia of childhood born of the peace of that June evening, its scents, its inwardness and whispered promise: the familiar countryside that made a lap for all these: the sea, island-girdling of England: the kindly natural earth: the very backgrounds and foundations of historic time: sucked up, swallowed, brought to nought. And, naked to this roofless and universal Nothing, she: immeasurably alone, a little feminine living being, and these ‘little decaying beauties of the body’.
But two seconds only, and blood danced again. Mary jumped to her feet: put on some clothes: rang the bell.
She was nearly ready when her father’s knock came on the door: his voice, ‘Can I come in?’
‘Come in, Father.’ She swam towards him with the style of a du Maurier duchess and shook hands in the most extreme high-handed affectation of the moment. ‘So charmed you could come, Lord Anmering. So charmin’ of you to spare us the time, with so much huntin’ and shootin’ this time of year, and the foxes eatin’ up all the pear-blossom and all.’
He played up; then stood back to admire her, theatrically posed for him, with sweeping of her train and manage of her point-lace fan. Her eyes danced with his. ‘Looking very bonnie,’ he said, and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Table arranged? I suppose you’ve given me Lady Southmere? And Hugh on your right?’
‘O yes. Duty at dinner: pleasure afterwards.’
He caught the look on her face as she turned to the dressing-table for her gloves: this and a strained something in her voice. ‘Not a very nice way,’ he said, ‘to talk about our friends.’
Mary said nothing, busy at her looking-glass.
Lord Anmering stood at the window, trimming his nails, his back towards her. Presently he said quietly, ‘I’m getting a bit tired of this attitude towards Glanford.’
Mary was unclasping her pearl necklace to change it for the sapphire pendant: it slipped and fell on the dressing-table. ‘Damn!’ she said, and was silent.
‘Do you understand what I said?’
‘Attitude? I’ve none, that I’m aware of. Certainly not “towards”.’ She fastened the clasp at the back of her neck, turned and came to where he stood, still turned away from her in the window: slipped her arm in his. ‘And I’m not going to be bullied on my birthday.’ His arm tightened on hers, a large reassuring pressure, as to say: Of course she shan’t.
He looked at his watch. ‘Five past eight. We ought to be going down.’
‘O and, Father,’ she said, turning back to him half way to the door, ‘I don’t think I told you (such a rush all day): whom do you think I met out riding this morning? and asked him to come to dinner tonight? Edward Lessingham. Only back from Italy, and I don’t know where, last month.’
Lord Anmering had stopped short ‘You asked him to dinner?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you do that for?’
‘Ordinary civility. Very lucky, too: we’d have been three thirteens otherwise, with Lady Dilstead turning up.’
‘Pah! We’d have been three thirteens with him, then, when you asked him. And it isn’t so: we were thirty-eight.’
‘Thirty-nine with Madame de Rosas.’
‘My dear girl, you can’t have that dancer woman sit down with us.’
‘Why not? She’s very nice. Perfectly respectable. I think it would be unkind not to. Anybody else would do it.’
‘It’s monstrous, and you’re old enough to know better.’
‘Well, I’ve asked her, and I’ve asked him. You can order them both out if you want to make a scene.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ said her father. She shrugged her shoulders and stood looking away, very rebellious and angry. ‘And I thought you knew perfectly well,’ he said, ‘that I don’t care for that young Lessingham about the place.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean, “about the place”.’
‘I don’t care about him.’
‘I can’t think why. You’ve always liked Anne Bremmerdale. Isn’t his family good enough for you? As old as ours. Older, I should think. You’ve hardly seen him.’
‘I don’t propose to discuss him,’ said Lord Anmering, looking at her piercingly through his eye-glass: then fell silent, as if in debate whether or not to speak his mind. ‘Look here, my darling,’ he said, at last, with an upward flick of the eyebrow letting the eye-glass fall: ‘It’s just as well to have cards on the table. It has been my serious hope that you would one day marry Hugh Glanford. I’m not going to force it or say any more. But, things being as they are, it is as well to be plain about it.’
‘I should have thought it had been plain enough for some time. Hanging about us all the season: most of last winter, too. People beginning to talk, I should think.’
‘What rubbish.’
‘All the same, it was nice of you to tell me, Father. Have you been plain about it to him too?’
‘He approached me some time ago.’
‘And you gave him your—?’
‘I wished him luck. But naturally he understands that my girl must decide for herself in a thing like that.’
‘How very kind of him.’ Mary began laughing. ‘This is delightful: like the ballad:
He’s teld her father and mither baith,
As I hear sindry say,
But he has nae teld the lass her sell,
Till on her wedding day.’
Her voice hardened: ‘I wish I was twenty-one. Do as I liked, then. Marry the next man that asked me—’
‘Mary, Mary—’
‘—So long as it wasn’t Hugh.’ Mary gave a little gulp and disappeared into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Her father,
