He was the schoolmaster
--the spoilsport. They were all afraid of him. Even Polly.
But here came Polly herself to say: "Dinner, dear," in her kindest tone.
She also put her arm round his neck and hugged him. "Not cross any more,
Richard? I know we behaved disgracefully." Her touch put the crown on
her words. Mahony drew her to him and kissed her.
But the true origin of the unpleasantness, Zara, who in her ghoulish
delight at seeing Hempel grovel before her--thus Mahony worded it--
behaved more kittenishly than ever at table: Zara Mahony could not so
easily forgive; and for the remainder of her stay his manner to her was
so forbidding that she, too, froze; and to Polly's regret the old bad
relation between them came up anew.
But Zara was enjoying herself too well to cut her visit short on
Mahony's account. "Besides, poor thing," thought Polly, "she has really
nowhere to go." What she did do was to carry her head very high in her
brother-in-law's presence; to speak at him rather than to him; and in
private to insist to Polly on her powers of discernment. "You may say
what you like, my dear--I can see you have a VERY GREAT DEAL to put up
with!"
At last, however, the day of her departure broke, and she went off amid
a babble of farewells, of requests for remembrance, a fluttering of
pocket-handkerchiefs, the like of which Polly had never known; and to
himself Mahony breathed the hope that they had seen the last of Zara,
her fripperies and affectations.
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