Mrs. Baxter
kissed her son, and passed her arm through Maggie's. Laurie followed;
gave them candles, and generally took one himself.
But this evening there was no piquet. Laurie had stayed later than
usual in the dining-room, and had wandered rather restlessly about
when he had joined the others. He looked at a London evening paper for
a little, paced about, vanished again, and only returned as the ladies
were making ready to depart. Then he gave them their candlesticks, and
himself came back to the drawing room.
He was, in fact, in a far more perturbed and excited mood than even
Maggie had had any idea of. She had interrupted him half-way through
the book, but he had read again steadily until five minutes before
dinner, and had, indeed, gone back again to finish it afterwards. He
had now finished it; and he wanted to think.
It had had a surprising effect on him, coming as it did upon a state
of mind intensely stirred to its depths by his sorrow. Crossness, as I
have said, had been the natural psychological result of his emotions;
but his emotions were none the less real. The froth of whipped cream
is real cream, after all.
Now Laurie had seen perfectly well the extreme unconvincingness of
Mrs.
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