It was ten o’clock when Eileen came down stairs, refused breakfast and
wandered listlessly out into the hot July air. She was pale and her
full lips were swollen. Her eyes were set in murky pools of shadow, as
yellow as ochre, beneath their screen of long lashes, and her blond
braids hung stiff and obdurate. As she entered the summer house,
Theodora greeted her with a derisive gesture.
“Lady Judith, tell her what she missed. I never saw the automobile yet
that could take me away from such a lobster salad.”
“Perhaps she didn’t know about it.”
“Indeed she did. She made the mayonnaise herself. Sylvia can’t hit it
one time in three. And mamma and Drusilla ... the oil always separates,
on them.”
“Separates on them!” Eileen sniffed. “Where do you get that line of
talk?”
She had relaxed on the oaken bench and sat kicking the gravel with the
toe of her loose slipper. After a time she broke the sullen silence:
“I didn’t mean to be discourteous to you, Lady Judith. That’s what
Sylvia scolded me about; but that wasn’t what she had in mind. She’s
sore because I didn’t bring Hal to her party. I knew what kind of a
frosty shoulder he’d get from Lary and papa. And the way she fawns over
him! It makes me sick. He hates to be toadied to--because his people
have money. He knows that if he didn’t have a rich father, mamma and
Sylvia wouldn’t think any more of him than Lary does. He’d take me away
from that house to-day, if he had his way about it. He knows what I’m
in for ... Sylvia to order me around for a month. I almost wish mamma
hadn’t gone to Bromfield.”