She got up and
went to a glass that hung on the wall. Taking one of the sidecombs from
her curls, she began to pull them out, winding them round her tiny
fingers, making more of them, and patting them back into place, till her
head was one silky mass of ripples. Then she looked at herself.
"I must have a new dress at once!" she said peremptorily.
"I don't know where you'll get it!" cried Netta--"you foolish child!"
"The young man will give it me." And still before the glass, she gave a
little bound, like a kitten. Then she ran back to her mother, took
Netta's face in her hands, dashed a kiss at it, and subsided, weak and
gasping, on to a sofa. When Victoria reappeared Felicia was motionless
as before, but there was a first streak of colour in her thin, cheeks,
and a queer brightness in her eyes.
Faversham was sitting in his Pengarth office, turning over the morning's
post. He had just ridden in from the Tower. Before him lay a telephone
message taken down for him by his clerk, before his arrival:
"Lord Tatham will be at Mr. Faversham's office by 12:30. He wishes to
speak to Mr. Faversham on important business."
Something, no doubt, to do with the right-of-way proceedings to which
Tatham was a party; or, possibly, with a County Council notice which had
roused Melrose to fury, to the effect that some Threlfall land would be
taken compulsorily for allotments under a recent Act, if the land were
not provided by arrangement.
"Perfectly reasonable! And every complaint that Tatham will make--if he
has come to complain--will be perfectly reasonable.
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