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And Lady Tressady flounced away from her son, laughing over her shoulder in one of her accustomed poses. She wore white muslin over cherry-coloured silk. The display of neck and shoulders could hardly have been more lavish; and the rouge on her cheeks had been overdone, which rarely happened. George turned from her hurriedly to speak to Lord Fontenoy. "What a fool that woman is!" thought Mrs.
And yet this long succession of hot and smelling dens, this series of pale, stooping figures, toiling hour after hour, at fever pace, in these stifling backyards, while the June sun shone outside, reminding one of English meadows and the ripple of English grass; these panting, dishevelled women, slaving beside their husbands and brothers, amid the rattle of the machines and the steam of the pressers' irons, with the sick or the dying, perhaps, in the bed beside them, and their blanched children at their feet sights of this sort, thus translated from the commonplace of reports and newspapers into a poignant, unsavoury truth, had at least this effect they vastly quickened the personal melancholy of the spectator, they raised and drove home a number of piercing questions which, probably, George Tressady would never have raised, and would have lived happily without raising, if it had not been for a woman, and a woman's charm.
"We'll have a fine time cleaning this house," she broke off, trying to steady her voice; "it's simply awful everything's ruined!" "We'll clean it up for your marriage, Belle," said Jerry, cheerfully, clearing his throat. "Mrs. Tressady and I are going to start Mr. Rogers here in business " "If you'd loan it to me at interest, sir " Belle's young man began hoarsely.
Tressady followed him to the landing, called to the butler, who was still up, and ceremoniously told him to get Mrs. Watton a cab. Then he walked back to the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him. "Letty!" His tone startled her. She looked round hastily. "Letty! you were defending me as I came in." He was extraordinarily pale his blue eyes flashed.
And my husband was Ancoats's guardian." "Dear me!" said Letty. "I should think it wasn't easy to be guardian to fifty thousand a year." Marcella did not answer did not, indeed, hear. Her look had stolen across to Mrs. Allison a sad, affectionate look, in no way meant for Lady Tressady. But Letty noticed it. "I suppose she adores him," she said. Marcella sighed. "There was never anything like it.
It was like the measles. But the sensible persons have got over it." "Thank you, mamma," said Watton, making her a smiling bow. Lady Tressady interrupted her talk with the squire at the other end of the table to observe what was going on.
I should have remembered that. I had heard it from Edward Watton." She looked up quickly. He felt that for the first time she took notice of him as an individual. "You know Mr. Watton? I think you are Sir George Tressady, are you not? You got in for Market Malford in November? I recollect. I didn't like your speeches." She laughed. So did he. "Yes, I got in just in time for a fighting session."
Meanwhile in the smoking-rooms and lobbies the uncertainties of the coming division kept up an endless hum of gossip and conjecture. Tressady wandered about it all like a ghost, indifferent and preoccupied, careful above all to avoid any more talk with Fontenoy. While he was in the House itself he stood at the door or sat in the cross-benches, so as to keep a space between him and his leader.
How could anyone suppose that in four years there would be no debts on such a pittance of an income? Some money, indeed, he had promised her; but not nearly enough, and not immediately. He "must look into things at home." Lady Tressady was enraged with herself and him that she had not succeeded better in making him understand how pressing, how urgent, matters were.
Lady Maxwell's penetrating but not loud voice seemed to pervade it, and her eyes and face, as she glanced from one speaker to another, drew alternately the shafts and the sympathy of the rest. Tressady made a face. "I say, Letty, promise me one thing!" His hand stole towards hers. Tully discreetly looked the other way. "Promise me not to be a political woman, there's a dear!"
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