To look at her swept away the
languid, hollow feeling with which she had come in; it made her think
of the tors at home, when the wind was blowing, and all was bare, and
grand, and sometimes terrible. There was something elemental in that
still sleep. And the old lady in the next led, with a brown wrinkled
face and bright black eyes brimful of life, seemed almost vulgar beside
such remote tranquillity, while she was telling Barbara that a little
bunch of heather in the better half of a soap-dish on the window-sill
had come from Wales, because, as she explained: "My mother was born in
Stirling, dearie; so I likes a bit of heather, though I never been out
o' Bethnal Green meself."
But when Barbara again passed, the sleeping woman was sitting up,
and looked but a poor ordinary thing--her strange fragile beauty all
withdrawn.
It was a relief when Lady Valleys said:
"My dear, my Naval Bazaar at five-thirty; and while I'm there you must
go home and have a rest, and freshen yourself up for the evening. We
dine at Plassey House."
The Duchess of Gloucester's Ball, a function which no one could very
well miss, had been fixed for this late date owing to the Duchess's
announced desire to prolong the season and so help the hackney cabmen;
and though everybody sympathized, it had been felt by most that it would
be simpler to go away, motor up on the day of the Ball, and motor down
again on the following morning.
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