Cardington Crescent Read Online Free

the minute after she wished she had not said them. She was relieved when the curtain went up again.
    “I cannot think where Mr. Gilbert gets such ridiculous plots!” Old Mrs. March drummed her fingers irritably when the final applause had died. “There is absolutely no sense in it at all!”
    “There is not meant to be, Grandmama,” Sybilla said with a dreamy smile.
    Mrs. March stared at her over her pince-nez, the black velvet ribbon dangling down her cheek. “Someone who is foolish because nature has so designed them, I pity; someone who is foolish by intention it is beyond me to understand,” she said coldly.
    “That I can well believe,” Jack Radley murmured behind Emily’s ear. “And I’d swear Mr. Gilbert would find her equally incomprehensible—only he wouldn’t care.”
    “My dear Lavinia, he is no more foolish than some of the romances by Madam Ouida, which I see you reading under brown paper covers.”
    Mrs. March’s face froze, but there were pink spots in her cheeks where rouge would have been on a younger woman. She deplored the vulgarity of painting one’s face; women who did that were “of a certain sort.”
    “You are quite mistaken, Vespasia,” she snapped. “It is a pity your vanity prevents you obtaining a pair of spectacles. One of these days you will fall downstairs or otherwise make an unfortunate exhibition of yourself. William! You had better give your grandmama your arm. I don’t wish to be the center of attention as we leave.” She rose to her feet and turned to the door. “Especially of that kind!”
    “You won’t be,” Vespasia retorted. “Not as long as Sybilla insists upon wearing scarlet.”
    “Very suitable for her,” Emily said, before she thought. She had intended it to be inaudible, but just at the precise moment everyone around them stopped speaking and her voice came clearly into the pause.
    There was a touch of color in George’s face, and she looked away instantly, wishing she had bitten her tongue till it bled rather than betray herself so nakedly.
    “I’m so glad you like it,” Sybilla answered quite calmly, rising also. There seemed no end to her aplomb. “We all have colors which flatter us, and those which don’t. I doubt I should look as well as you do in that shade of blue.”
    That made it worse. Instead of spitting back she had been charming. Even now, George was smiling at her. Almost as if some invisible current had designed it, they were swept out of the box into the eddy of people pressing to reach the foyer, George next to Sybilla, offering his arm as if anything less would have been uncivil.
    Emily found herself, hot-faced and stumbling, being pushed and jostled forward with Jack Radley’s arm about her and Great-aunt Vespasia’s beautiful silver head in front.
    Once they reached the foyer it was inescapable that they should meet with people they knew, and be obliged to exchange opinions and inquiries as to health, and all the other chitchat of such an occasion. It swam over her head in a senseless bedlam. She nodded and smiled and agreed with everything that penetrated into her mind. Someone asked after her son, Edward, and she replied that he was at home and very well. Then George nudged her sharply, and she remembered to inquire after the family of the speaker. It all babbled on around her:
    “Delightful performance!”
    “Have you seen Pinafore?”
    “How does that piece go again?”
    “Shall you be at Henley? I do love regattas. Such a delightful thing for a hot day, don’t you agree?”
    “I prefer Goodwood. There is something about the races—all the silks, don’t you know!”
    “But my dear, what about Ascot?”
    “I rather care for Wimbledon, myself.”
    “I haven’t a thing to wear! I must see my dressmaker immediately—I really need an entire new wardrobe.”
    “Wasn’t the Royal Academy too frightful this year!”
    “My dear, I do agree! Perfectly tedious!”
    Clumsily, she survived nearly half an hour of