Chapter 56

The tea-drinking at any rate stemmed the flow of Mrs. Tolputt’s volubility for the moment, but the consolation to Teresa was small, for she knew that Maud would be off again, no sooner than she had taken her nose out of the cup. She writhed as she thought that Sebastian might have come on any other day, when Maud was not there. And now he would certainly never come again. She kept glancing at him as he sat there, so sleek in his black London clothes—“his hair is like patent leather,” she thought—his ebony stick lai…