For Dinah was intensely sensitive, keenly susceptible to
rebuke and coldness, and her warm heart shrank from unkindness with a
shrinking that was actual pain.
She knew that the little social world of Perrythorpe looked down upon her
mother though not actually refusing to associate with her. Bathurst had
married a circus-girl in his green Oxford days; so the story went,--a
hard, handsome woman older than himself, and fiercely, intensely
ambitious. Lack of funds had prevented her climbing very high, and
bitterly she resented her failure. He had never done a day's work in his
life, but, unlike his wife, he had plenty of friends. He was well-bred, a
good rider, a straight shot, and an entertaining guest. He knew everyone
within a radius of twenty miles, and was upon terms of easy intimacy with
the de Vignes and many others who received him with pleasure, but very
seldom went out of their way to encounter his wife.
Dinah shrewdly suspected that this fact accounted for much of the
bitterness of her mother's outlook. Her ambition had apparently died of
starvation long since, but her resentment remained. Her hand was against
practically all the world, including her daughter, whose fairy-like
daintiness and piquancy were so obvious a contrast to the somewhat coarse
and flashy beauty that had once been hers. For all that Dinah inherited
from her mother was her gipsy darkness.
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