The curtain falls.

ACT II

The scene is LADY CHESHIRE's morning room, at ten o'clock on the
following day. It is a pretty room, with white panelled walls;
and chrysanthemums and carmine lilies in bowls. A large bow
window overlooks the park under a sou'-westerly sky. A piano
stands open; a fire is burning; and the morning's correspondence
is scattered on a writing-table. Doors opposite each other lead
to the maid's workroom, and to a corridor. LADY CHESHIRE is
standing in the middle of the room, looking at an opera cloak,
which FREDA is holding out.

LADY CHESHIRE. Well, Freda, suppose you just give it up!

FREDA. I don't like to be beaten.

LADY CHESHIRE. You're not to worry over your work. And by the way,
I promised your father to make you eat more. [FREDA smiles.]

LADY CHESHIRE. It's all very well to smile. You want bracing up.
Now don't be naughty. I shall give you a tonic. And I think you had
better put that cloak away.

FREDA. I'd rather have one more try, my lady.

LADY CHESHIRE. [Sitting doom at her writing-table] Very well.

FREDA goes out into her workroom, as JACKSON comes in from the
corridor.

JACKSON. Excuse me, my lady. There's a young woman from the
village, says you wanted to see her.

LADY CHESHIRE. Rose Taylor? Ask her to come in. Oh! and Jackson
the car for the meet please at half-past ten.

JACKSON having bowed and withdrawn, LADY CHESHIRE rises with
worked signs of nervousness, which she has only just suppressed,
when ROSE TAYLOR, a stolid country girl, comes in and stands
waiting by the door.

LADY CHESHIRE. Well, Rose. Do come in!
[ROSE advances perhaps a couple of steps.]

LADY CHESHIRE. I just wondered whether you'd like to ask my advice.
Your engagement with Dunning's broken off, isn't it?

ROSE. Yes--but I've told him he's got to marry me.

LADY CHESHIRE. I see! And you think that'll be the wisest thing?

ROSE. [Stolidly] I don't know, my lady. He's got to.

LADY CHESHIRE. I do hope you're a little fond of him still.

ROSE. I'm not. He don't deserve it.

LADY CHESHIRE: And--do you think he's quite lost his affection for
you?

ROSE. I suppose so, else he wouldn't treat me as he's done. He's
after that--that--He didn't ought to treat me as if I was dead.

LADY CHESHIRE. No, no--of course. But you will think it all well
over, wo