Her arms were bare and her slender bare feet, laced with
gold-clasped fastenings, showed on her white sandals. Jack saw that Sir
Basil's eyes were fixed on her with an expression of wonder.
He asked her, as he took the last cup from her, if she were not cold, and,
gentle, though unsmiling, Imogen replied, "Oh, no!" glancing at the roaring
wood fire, that illuminated her whiteness as if with a sacrificial glow.
"Do sit down and have your tea, Imogen; you must be very tired," her mother
said, with something of the chill that the scene at the lunch-table had
diffused still in her voice.
"Not very, thanks, mama dear," said Imogen; and, more incongruous in
loveliness than before, she sat down in a high-backed chair at some little
distance from the tea-table. Sir Basil, as if with a sort of helplessness,
remained beside her.
"Yes, it was a great success, wasn't it?" Jack heard her replying
presently, while she drank the tea with which Sir Basil had eagerly
supplied her. "I'm so glad."
"You liked doing it, didn't you? You couldn't have done it, like
that--looked like that, if you hadn't cared a lot about it," Sir Basil
pursued.
Imogen smiled a little and said that she didn't know that she had liked
doing her part particularly,--it was of her crippled children that she was
thinking. "We'll be able to get the Home now," she said.
"It was for cripple children?"
"Didn't you know? I should have thought mama would have told you.
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