Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/48



T Cypress Hill, Julia Shane and her elder daughter returned, when the door had closed on their guests, to the drawing-room to discuss after a custom of long standing the entertainment of the evening. They agreed that Mrs. Harrison had grown much too stout, that she was indeed on the verge of apoplexy; that Miss Abercrombie became steadily more fidgety and affected.

"A woman should marry," said Julia Shane, "even if she can do no better than a day laborer."

Two candles by the side of the tall mirror and one by the flaming Venice of Mr. Turner guttered feebly and expired. Now that she was alone, the old woman lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke quietly into the still air. It was Lily who interrupted the silence.

"Willie proposed to me again," she said presently.

The mother made no answer but regarded the girl quietly with a curious questioning look in her tired eyes. Lily, seated in the glow of light from the majolica lamp, must have understood what was passing in her mind.

"No," she said, "if I had wanted to marry, I could have had a man . . . a real man." For a second her eyes grew dark with emotion and her red lips curved as if she remembered suddenly and with a shameless pleasure the embraces of her lover. "No," she continued, "I wouldn't play such a trick, even on a poor thing like Willie."

The old woman knocked the ashes from her cigarette. The rings flashed and glittered in the candle light. "Sometimes," she said softly, "I think you are hopeless . . . altogether abandoned."

There was a note of melancholy in her voice, so poignant that the girl suddenly sprang from her chair, crossed the little space between them and embraced her mother impulsively.