After dinner he sought her out. She had known that would happen: she had been avoiding it for weeks, but it was useless to play at hide-and-seek with the inevitable, and she calmly watched him approach.
“Why did you laugh?” he asked at once, in his old, angry fashion. “You were laughing at me.”
“Ah, you’re not so free with your smiles that they have no meaning.”
“Perhaps not, but I don’t know what the meaning was.”
“I believe you’ve been laughing at me ever since I came back.”
“God knows,” he answered with a shrug; “I never do understand what people laugh at.”
“Somebody is going to sing,” she warned him as a gaunt girl went towards the piano; and sinking on to a convenient and sheltered couch, they resigned themselves to listen—or to endure. From that corner Rose had a view of the long room, mediocre in its decoration, mediocre in its occupants. She could see her host standing before the fire, swinging his eyeglasses on a cord and gazing at the cornice as the song proceeded. She could see Christabel’s neck and shoulders and the back of her fair head. Beside her a plump matron had her face suitably composed; three bored young men were leaning against a wall.
The music jangled, the voice shrieked a false emotion, and Rose’s eyebrows rose with the voice. It was dull, it was dreary, it was a waste of time, yet what else, Rose questioned, could she do with time, of which there was so much? She could not find an answer, and there rose at that moment a chorus of thanks and a gentle clapping of hands. The gaunt girl had finished her song and, poking her chin, returned to her seat. The room buzzed with chatter; it seemed that only Francis and Rose were silent. She turned to look at him.
“When do you think we shall have exhausted Radstowe hospitality? And the worst of it is we have to give dinners ourselves, and the same things happen every time.”
“I’d rather be soporific in an arm-chair with a pipe.”
“This is one of the penalties of marriage,” Rose said lightly.
“Look here, I’m giving Christabel another jumping lesson to-morrow. I’ve put some hurdles up. Will you come? She’s getting on very well. I’ll take her hunting before long.”
“Oh, rather! My word, it would have been a catastrophe if she hadn’t taken to it.” He paused, considering the terrible situation from which he had been saved. “Can’t imagine what I should have done. But she’s never satisfied. She’s beginning to jeer at the old brown horse. I’ve seen a grey mare that might do for her,” and he went on to enumerate the animal’s points.
