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Her gloved hands were crossed on her lap, she sat ostentatiously erect, her satin cloak falling around her in regal folds; her face was a trifle paler than usual, but the mocking light shone in her eyes. At Claire's entrance she stood up, and crossed the little room to her side. "My dear," she said calmly, "I am an obstinate old woman, but I have the sense to know when I'm beaten.
"He was angry at me, and I don't think he's as bad as you think he is." "Marion!" cried Claire, her eyes widening with wonder. Then Marion had the misfortune to blush under Claire's curious gaze.
He extracted Claire's photograph from his suit-case and gazed solemnly upon it. At first he was shocked to find that it only succeeded in convincing him that Elizabeth was quite the most attractive girl he ever had met. The photographer had given Claire rather a severe look.
Prom Havre they sailed for Portsmouth, when, with their usual fate, they encountered a stormy passage of twenty-seven hours. It must have been a trying journey for them in more ways than one, for if there was any uncertainty as to Claire's position on leaving England, Mary could now no longer have been in any doubt.
Every virtue in Elizabeth seemed to call up the recollection of a corresponding defect in Claire It became almost mathematical. Elizabeth was so straight on the level they called it over here. Claire was a corkscrew among women. Elizabeth was sunny and cheerful. Querulousness was Claire's besetting sin. Elizabeth was such a pal. Claire had never been that.
The bug went in shot over the bank, dipped down till the little hood sloped below them as though they were looping the loop, struck the rushing water with a splash which hurled yellow drops over Claire's rose jersey suit, lumbered ahead, struck the farther bank, pawed at it feebly, rose two inches, slipped back, and sat there with the gurgling water all around it, turned into a motor-boat.
As if pursued by some baneful presence, he hastened through Claire's beautiful boudoir, across the dining-room hung with the Gobelins tapestries which his wife had brought him as part of her slender dower, and so into the oval hall which formed the centre of the house. And there Jacques de Wissant waited for a while, trying to still and to co-ordinate his troubled thoughts and impressions.
And that ended Claire's knowledge of the inside of a motor. She stopped two motorists. The first was sure that there was dirt on the point of the needle valve, in the carburetor. While Claire shuddered lest he never get it back, he took out the needle valve, wiped it, put it back and the engine was again started, and again, with great promptness, it stopped.
"I went over it and I went over it, in my mind what I'd do where I'd go and now Now!... I couldn't take that fine job you had your eye on for me, not even if it had come to something. Don't you remember? I mean, the splendid job you had the idea about, that first night I was sick. I shan't need it now, shall I, Martha?" "You got it!" said Martha. Claire's wide eyes opened wider in wonderment.
Perlute, in the Berrichon dictionary, signifies troubled, excited, upset, and applied perfectly to Claire's condition. Her rapid walk in the cold country air, the effort she had made in order to do what she was doing, imparted an unwonted expression to her face, which was much less reserved than usual.