"Don't say anything about my telegram," she had rapidly whispered to Cyril; there was no time for further explanation. Constance was at the top of the steps.
Constance had not heard the whisper, but she had seen it; and she saw a guilty, puzzled look on Cyril's face, afterwards an ineffectively concealed conspiratorial look on both their faces.
They had 'something between them,' from which she, the mother, was shut out!
Was it not natural that she should be wounded?
She was far too proud to mention the telegrams.
And as neither Cyril nor Sophia mentioned them, the circumstances leading to Cyril's change of plan were not referred to at all, which was very curious.
Then Cyril was more sociable than he had ever been; he was different, under his aunt's gaze.
Certainly he treated his mother faultlessly.
But Constance said to herself:
"It is because she is here that he is so specially nice to me."
When tea was finished and they were going upstairs to the drawing- room, she asked him, with her eye on the
'Stag at Eve' engraving:
"Well, is it a success?"
"What?"
His eye followed hers.
"Oh, you've changed it!
What did you do that for, mater?"
"You said it would be better like that," she reminded him.
"Did I?" He seemed genuinely surprised.
"I don't remember.
I believe it is better, though," he added.
"It might be even better still if you turned it the other way up."
He pulled a face to Sophia, and screwed up his shoulders, as if to indicate:
"I've done it, this time!"
"How? The other way up?" Constance queried. Then as she comprehended that he was teasing her, she said: "Get away with you!" and pretended to box his ears.
"You were fond enough of that picture at one time!" she said ironically.
"Yes, I was, mater," he submissively agreed.
"There's no getting over that."
And he pressed her cheeks between his hands and kissed her.
In the drawing-room he smoked cigarettes and played the piano-- waltzes of his own composition.
Constance and Sophia did not entirely comprehend those waltzes.
But they agreed that all were wonderful and that one was very pretty indeed. (It soothed Constance that Sophia's opinion coincided with hers.) He said that that waltz was the worst of the lot.
When he had finished with the piano, Constance informed him about Amy.
"Oh! She told me," he said, "when she brought me my water.
I didn't mention it because I thought it would be rather a sore subject."
Beneath the casualness of his tone there lurked a certain curiosity, a willingness to hear details.
He heard them.
At five minutes to ten, when Constance had yawned, he threw a bomb among them on the hearthrug.
"Well," he said, "I've got an appointment with Matthew at the Conservative Club at ten o'clock.
I must go.
Don't wait up for me."
Both women protested, Sophia the more vivaciously.
It was Sophia now who was wounded.
"It's business," he said, defending himself.
"He's going away early to-morrow, and it's my only chance." And as Constance did not brighten he went on: "Business has to be attended to.
You mustn't think I've got nothing to do but enjoy myself."
No hint of the nature of the business!
He never explained.
As to business, Constance knew only that she allowed him three hundred a year, and paid his local tailor.
The sum had at first seemed to her enormous, but she had grown accustomed to it.