"Dear Maud, I am very, very sorry. But you know, dear, how I trust you."
Maud pondered this remark, in her silent, uncomfortable way, for a moment.
"Do you mean you trust me eventually to accept him?" she asked.
Mrs. Brereton wondered in her own mind where Maud _could_ have got her tactlessness from. Aloud she said:
"I trust you in every way, dear--every way. And it shows your good sense that you did not definitely refuse him. I do not wish to force you at all or hurry your decision."
This was all that was said on the subject at the time, but Mildred, after careful thought, was convinced she had done right. This impeccable attitude was completed by her looking rather sad whenever her daughter was observing her, sighing, and constantly calling her "dear child" in well-modulated tones of chastened and uncomplaining affection. This policy--if it is possible to use so cold and calculating a word for a process so tender--had its desired effect, and Maud felt herself touched with a sense of vague contrition. Eventually, not feeling sure of herself, she had decided to confide her difficulty to Marie Alston, for whom she cherished a shy and secret adoration. This interview, however, had not been productive of a result which harmonized with her mother's tender processes; indeed, had Mildred known that her gentle dropping of water on a stone (the tender process) would have led her daughter to ask advice of Marie, she would have adopted quite different methods. Maud told her about the interview the same afternoon. She was not called "dear child," or words to that effect, on this occasion.
Now, there is a sort of anger which, though it is often seen in combination with irritation and ill-temper, is something very different from either. It is not a quick-burning emotion; it is in no hurry to strike and to hurt, but is quite deliberate, very patient, and at the end, when a favourable opportunity presents itself, strikes hard. It was this quality of anger that entered into Mildred's mind when Maud told her of this interview. Had she been simply irritated with Marie or angry with an anger of the less dangerous and quicker sort, she would probably have rushed round to Park Lane, used the language of a cook to Marie, burst into tears, and probably made it up a day or two later. But she had not the slightest impulse to do any of those things. She was irritated with Maud, called her a fool, and sent her away. Then she sat down and thought about Marie.