"Eh? What?" asks Lady Rodney, in a dazed fashion, yet coming back to life with amazing rapidity. She sits up. Then in an instant the situation explains itself to her; she collects herself, bestows one glance of pa.s.sionate anger upon Mona, and then rises to welcome Mrs.

Carson with her usual suave manner and bland smile, throwing into the former an air meant to convey the flattering idea that for the past week she has been living on the hope of seeing her soon again.

She excuses her unwonted drowsiness with a little laugh, natural and friendly, and begs them "not to betray her." Clothed in all this sweetness she drops a word or two meant to crush Mona; but that hapless young woman hears her not, being bent on explaining to Mrs. Carson that, as a rule, the Irish peasantry do not go about dressed only in gla.s.s beads, like the gay and festive Zulus, and that petticoats and breeches are not utterly unknown.

This is tough work, and takes her all her time, as Mrs. Carson, having made up her mind to the beads, accepts it rather badly being undeceived, and goes nearly so far as telling Mona that she knows little or nothing about her own people.

Then Violet and Doatie drop in, and conversation becomes general, and presently the visit comes to an end, and the Carsons fade away, and Mona is left to be bear the brunt of Lady Rodney's anger, which has been steadily growing, instead of decreasing, during the past half-hour.

"Are there no servants in my house," demands she, in a terrible tone, addressing Mona a steely light coming into her blue eyes that Mona knows and hates so well, "that you must feel it your duty to guide my visitors to my presence?"

"If I made a mistake I am sorry for it."

"It was unfortunate Mona should have met them at the hall door,--Edith Carson told me about it,--but it could not be helped," says Violet calmly.

"No, it couldn't be helped," says little Doatie. But their intervention only appears to add fuel to the fire of Lady Rodney's wrath.

"It _shall_ be helped," she says, in a low, but condensed tone. "For the future I forbid any one in my house to take it upon them to say whether I am in or out. I am the one to decide that. On what principle did you show them in here?" she asks, turning to Mona, her anger increasing as she remembers the rakish cap: "why did you not say, when you were unlucky enough to find yourself face to face with them, that I was not at home?"

"Because you were at home," replies Mona, quietly, though in deep distress.

"That doesn't matter," says Lady Rodney: "it is a mere formula. If it suited your purpose you could have said so--I don't doubt--readily enough."

"I regret that I met them," says Mona, who will not say she regrets she told the truth.

"And to usher them in here! Into one of my most private rooms! Unlikely people, like the Carsons, whom you have heard me speak of in disparaging terms a hundred times! I don't know what you could have been thinking about. Perhaps next time you will be kind enough to bring them to my bedroom."

"You misunderstand me," says Mona, with tears in her eyes.

"I hardly think so. You can refuse to see people yourself when it suits you. Only yesterday, when Mr. Boer, our rector, called, and I sent for you, you would not come."

"I don't like Mr. Boer," says Mona, "and it was not me he came to see."

"Still, there was no necessity to insult him with such a message as you sent. Perhaps," with unpleasant meaning, "you do not understand that to say you are busy is rather more a rudeness than an excuse for one's non-appearance."

"It was true," says Mona: "I was writing letters for Geoffrey."

"Nevertheless, you might have waived that fact, and sent down word you had a headache."

"But I hadn't a headache," says Mona, bending her large truthful eyes with embarra.s.sing earnestness upon Lady Rodney.

"Oh, if you were determined--" returns she, with a shrug.

"I was not determined: you mistake me," exclaims Mona, miserably. "I simply hadn't a headache: I never had one in my life,--and I shouldn't know how to get one!"

At this point, Geoffrey--who has been hunting all the morning--enters the room with Captain Rodney.

"Why, what is the matter?" he says, seeing signs of the lively storm on all their faces. Doatie explains hurriedly.

"Look here," says Geoffrey. "I won't have Mona spoiled. If she hadn't a headache, she hadn't, you know, and if you were at home, why, you were, and that's all about it. Why should she tell a lie about it?"

"What do you mean, Geoffrey?" demands his mother, with suppressed indignation.

"I mean that she shall remain just as she is. The world may be 'given to lying,' as Shakspeare tells us, but I will not have Mona tutored into telling fashionable falsehoods," says this intrepid young man facing his mother without a qualm of a pa.s.sing dread. "A lie of any sort is base, and a prevarication is only a mean lie. She is truthful, let her stay so. Why should she learn it is the correct thing to say she is not at home when she is, or that she is suffering from a foolish megrim when she isn't? I don't suppose there is much harm in saying either of these things, as n.o.body ever believes them; but--let her remain as she is."

"Is she also to learn that you are at liberty to lecture your own mother?" asks Lady Rodney, pale with anger.

"I am not lecturing anyone," replies he, looking very like her, now that his face has whitened a little and a quick fire has lit itself within his eyes. "I am merely speaking against a general practice. 'Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie,' is a line that always returns to me. And, as I love Mona better than anything on earth, I shall make it the business of my life to see she is not made unhappy by any one."

At this Mona lifts her head, and turns upon him eyes full of the tenderest love and trust. She would have dearly liked to go to him, and place her arms round his neck, and thank him with a fond caress for this dear speech, but some innate sense of breeding restrains her.

Any demonstration on her part just now may make a scene, and scenes are ever abhorrent. And might she not yet further widen the breach between mother and son by an ill-timed show of affection for the latter?

"Still, sometimes, you know, it is awkward to adhere to the very letter of the law," says Jack Rodney, easily. "Is there no compromise? I have heard of women who have made a point of running into the kitchen-garden when unwelcome visitors were announced, and so saved themselves and their principles. Couldn't Mona do that?"

This speech is made much of, and laughed at for no reason whatever except that Violet and Doatie are determined to end the unpleasant discussion by any means, even though it may be at the risk of being deemed silly. After some careful management they get Mona out of the room, and carry her away with them to a little den off the eastern hall, that is very dear to them.

"It is the most unhappy thing I ever heard of," begins Doatie, desperately. "What Lady Rodney can see to dislike in you, Mona, I can't imagine. But the fact is, she is hateful to you. Now, we," glancing at Violet, "who are not particularly amiable, are beloved by her, whilst you, who are all 'sweetness and light,' she detests most heartily."

"It is true," says Violet, evenly. "Yet, dear Mona, I wish you could try to be a little more like the rest of the world."

"I want to very much," says poor Mona, her eyes filling with tears.

"But," hopelessly, "must I begin by learning to tell lies?" All this teaching is very bitter to her.

"Lies! Oh, fie!" says Doatie. "Who tells lies? n.o.body, except the naughty little boys in tracts, and they always break their legs off apple-trees, or else get drowned on a Sunday morning. Now, we are not drowned, and our legs are uninjured. No, a lie is a horrid thing,--so low, and in such wretched taste. But there are little social fibs that may be uttered,--little taradiddles,--that do no harm to anybody, and that n.o.body believes in, but all pretend to, just for the sake of politeness."

Thus Doatie, looking preternaturally wise, but faintly puzzled at her own view of the question.

"It doesn't sound right," says Mona, shaking her head.

"She doesn't understand," puts in Violet, quickly. "Mona, are you going to see everybody that may choose to call upon you, good, bad, and indifferent, from this till you die?"

"I suppose so," says Mona lifting her brows.

"Then I can only say I pity you," says Miss Mansergh, leaning back in her chair, with the air of one who would say, "Argument here is in vain."

"I sha'n't want to see them, perhaps," says Mona, apologetically, "but how shall I avoid it?"

"Ah, now, that is more reasonable; now we are coming to it," says Doatie, briskly. "We 'return to our muttons.' As Lady Rodney, in a very rude manner, tried to explain to you, you will either say you are not at home, or that you have a headache. The latter is not so good; it carries more offence with it, but it comes in pretty well sometimes."

"But, as I said to Lady Rodney, suppose I haven't a headache," retorts Mona, triumphantly.

"Oh, you are incorrigible!" says Doatie, leaning back in her chair in turn, and tilting backward her little flower-like face, that looks as if even the most harmless falsehood must be unknown to it.

"Could you not imagine you had one?" she says, presently as a last resource.

"I could not," says Mona. "I am always quite well." She is standing before them like a culprit called to the bar of justice. "I never had a headache, or a toothache, or a nightmare, in my life."

"Or an umbrella, you should add. I once knew a woman like that, but she was not like you," says Doatie. "Well, if you are going to be as literal as you now are, until you call for your shroud, I must say I don't envy you."