Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/294

272 court look at the back you like best.” Jane assented so unwillingly that her mother glanced at her, with a laugh in her eyes to see how sullenly Jane’s eyes glowed under her long lashes, and how the corners of her short upper lip pulled down.

The long, graceful lines of the Garden car could not surmount the gloom on the faces of all its passengers, save one, on the way to the station to meet Lord Kelmscourt. It was a car of a make that always suggests pleasure, its lines are so sweeping, so elegant. But to-day it looked as though it bore three youthful chief mourners. Jane still sullenly unhappy, Florimel gloomy and angry, Mary so intent upon making the best of it that her form of melancholy was the most depressing of all.

Mrs. Garden seemed to see nothing of all this; she chattered and laughed, and was animatedly blithe, gowned in her most becoming way, her hat and its plumes so shading her face that she looked more than ever her daughters’ eldest sister.

In spite of their disposition to regard Lord Wilfrid as their natural enemy, the Garden girls could not help admitting to themselves that he had an attractive face and air as he came briskly