Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/410

408 with any impulse toward embarrassing confidences, but with the feeling of one definite personality for another, with a certain pleasure in this non-hostile contact. "Have you been ill?" Teresa asked finally.

"Nervous prostration, I believe it was," Isabel answered sceptically. "I'm supposed to be still having it, whatever it is. It is rather pleasant now. It's simply a disinclination to do any mortal thing, and I like that. After nearly forty years of activity for its own sake, it's pleasant not to want to do anything, and to have a headache at the back of your neck if you try to do anything."

"But Alice said you were seeing a lot of people."

"Oh, just seeing them. One needn't talk, you know. They come and dine and gamble. Sometimes I don't even appear. If they didn't come I should be trying to read or something. As it is, I watch them, and enjoy my own decay. … Well, then you'll come on Sunday? I shall send a motor over for you. You can't drive in these country cabs—you'd freeze to death. May I see the boy?"

Ronald was brought in, and envisaged the lady with his cool but not unfriendly gaze. They entered upon the subject of automobiles, or "Wongs," as Ronald called them; and finding that the lady was the possessor of the splendid