Amber turned away. She had never known anything more pathetic than the way in which Josephine had rushed along when once she began to speak.
There was not a note of Josephine's voice in all she had said. When Josephine had ever played at being cynical, she had gone softly--there had been something of merriment in her voice; but now there was the gleam of chilled steel in every flash of her phrases. The implacable brilliance of a bayonet charge was in all her words. Amber felt as if a bird which had always sung the song of a thrush had suddenly developed the metallic shriek of the parrot.
Amber was ready to weep at the pathos of it. It was pathetic; but terrible. She saw that Josephine's nerves were strung up to the highest point of tension, and that was why the effect of shrillness was produced by her speech.
She turned to Lady Gwendolen. Surely Lady Gwendolen would at last become a mother to her own daughter! Surely she would detect the pathos of the change that had come about in her nature. And indeed Lady Gwendolen was very sympathetic.
"It is all very well to make light of the whole business, my dear Amber," she cried plaintively. "Daughters engage themselves to be married, and sometimes get married too, without a thought for their mothers. Ah, is there no poet--no novelist--who will deal adequately with the mother's tragedy? It will make me look a hundred, at the very least! A married daughter! ... 'Good heavens!' people will say. 'I had no idea that Lady Gwendolen had a married daughter; why then she must be at least'--and then they will name some horrid age--forty, may be,--I know the way of these women. 'Forty--she must be a good way over forty,' they will say. 'She was no chicken when she married, and her daughter looks every day of twenty-six--why, she must be at least fifty'--they will try to make me out to be fifty--fifty-two the spiteful ones will insist on--I know them. They will take very good care never to look up Debrett to get at the truth. Ah, the Mother's Tragedy--the Mother's Tragedy. No one ever thinks of asking about a woman's age until her daughter gets married. Then, it's the first thing they do. Ah, the Mother's Tragedy! How well that broad brim suits her, doesn't it, Joe? You didn't think, I suppose, of a bow of cerise chiffon just at the curve? A little daring thing like that, you know, is often quite effective."