Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/210

Rh and to have shifted itself to less suitable quarters immediately under the short string of beads that encircles your throat. And annoyance changed to fury when she found that she was trembling all over.

Had he written to his mother about her? Why should he have written? What could he have said? Why had she come? Why could she have come? To inspect? Why? To interfere? What with? To tell Miss Quested that young men's mothers didn't approve of unchaperoned days on rivers? To say what she thought of unchaperoned girls anyhow, and to take her boy away? Whatever she had come for, her coming would change things so that they could never be the same again, and Jane had to admit to herself that she did not want things changed. This wonder and these admissions all found time to be between her laying her hand on the knob of the door and her turning it. Then she did turn it, and went in.

The room seemed full of a dusky golden twilight; the flowers, she noted with relief, looked quite decent—only the lupins had shed their petals all over the Sheraton card-table in that aggravating way lupins have.

Then she found herself laying her violet-tinted hand in a cool, gloved hand which seemed to expect it, and saying that she was very pleased to see Mrs. Rochester, because this seemed to be the right thing to say.

"Thank you so much," said the visitor in a thin, high voice. "That's very sweet of you. You see, I was in the neighbourhood and I couldn't resist the temptation to call. I have heard so much of you from my son. You must know," she added, with an elegant little simper, "you must know I'm a very devoted mother."

"I'm afraid you're rather affected," said Jane, but not aloud. Aloud she said:

"How nice"—again because that seemed the best thing to say.

"Ah, well, family affection involves great anxieties." "What are we coming to now?" Jane murmured, but