Lady Anstruthers, looking shy and awkward as she fingered an ornament on
a small table, seemed singularly a part of her background. Her evening
dress, slipping off her thin shoulders, was as faded and out of date
as her carpet. It had once been delicately blue and gauzy, but its
gauziness hung in crushed folds and its blue was almost grey. It was
also the dress of a girl, not that of a colourless, worn woman, and her
consciousness of its unfitness showed in her small-featured face as she
came forward.
"Do you--recognise it, Betty?" she asked hesitatingly. "It was one of my
New York dresses. I put it on because--because----" and her stammering
ended helplessly.
"Because you wanted to remind me," Betty said. If she felt it easier to
begin with an excuse she should be provided with one.
Perhaps but for this readiness to fall into any tone she chose to adopt
Rosy might have endeavoured to carry her poor farce on, but as it was
she suddenly gave it up.
"I put it on because I have no other," she said. "We never have visitors
and I haven't dressed for dinner for so long that I seem to have nothing
left that is fit to wear. I dragged this out because it was better than
anything else.
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