Mr. Gibbon sighed heavily. He pushed his own cup away from him as a signal perhaps that for him also the tea was spoilt. "But why need you go in that particular frock, Miss Deleah?"
She laughed with the tears in her eyes, and looked down at her school frock--a black skirt and a white muslin "garibaldi" (the garment so called at that time being extremely like the shirt blouse, or waist, as the Americans have it, of to-day). "Oh, how funny men are!" she said. "To think I could go in the half-guinea places in such a dress!"
"It's a beautiful dress, isn't it! It seems so to me. And I don't think it matters at all what you wear, Miss Deleah."
He spoke in a hushed voice, as if conscious of saying something of tremendous import. Deleah accepted the remark as a simple statement of a fact.
"It doesn't matter, perhaps, really. But Bessie thinks differently. Most people do. I shall have to wear what Bessie wishes."
"I notice you are always the one to give way, Miss Deleah."
"Can I do anything? I would do _anything_--" He spoke in the same hushed voice; with his arms extended on each side of his plate, he was gripping the edge of the table tightly, "Anything!"
"I know. I know you are a true friend. I know she talks to you. She talks about Mr. Reggie Forcus. Bessie can't see that things are different with us--at least she sees, of course, but she does not realise that they must be different; not only now, but for ever. She never sees us with other people's eyes. It never comes home to her that the friends we had we can never have again. What have people like the Forcuses to do with us!"
"I think that Mr. Reggie Forcus, mighty as he thinks hisself, or the Prince of Wales, come to that, might feel hisself honoured to be taken notice of by you, Miss Deleah--or by Miss Bessie."
Deleah laughed in spite of herself. "You are too kind, Mr. Gibbon."
She got up from her chair and picked up the concert tickets and twisted them about in her fingers with a little distaste of them. "All this is very kind of Mr. Boult, of course," she said: "and one likes to be sure there is a generous heart beneath that--well, that atrocious manner of his. But we're under mountains of obligation to people already, and we can do without concert tickets. We can do without--" She was going to say without flowers, but she leant across the table and stooped her face above the pot of heliotrope that graced the centre of the humble board, then lifted it, shaking her head. "No; we could not do without the flowers," she said. "I do thank the good man for his flowers; and I shall tell him so the first time I see him. I have made up my mind."