Wherefore, there was little in her mother's call to engage Dorothy pleasantly; and she hung back, and answered slowly, with soles of lead.
When Dorothy at last came in, Mrs.Hanway-Harley lost no time in skirmishing, but at once opened the main battle.
"My child," said she, with a look that she meant should be ineffably affectionate, and which was not, "Count Storri has been talking of you." "Yes ?" queried Dorothy, with sinking heart, but making a gallant effort at childish innocence.
Mrs.Hanway-Harley lost patience.

She observed and resented the childish innocence, rebuking it smartly.
"Rub that baby look out of your face, instantly! You are not a child!" Dorothy stiffened like a grenadier.

She remembered Richard; her mother was right; she was not a child, she was a woman, and so the world should find her.

Dorothy's eyes began to gleam dangerously, and if Mrs.
Hanway-Harley had owned any gift to read faces, she might have hesitated at this pinch.
"What would you have ?" said Dorothy, and her tones were as brittle and as devoid of sentimental softness as Mrs.Hanway-Harley's.
"Marriage." "Marriage with Storri ?" "Dorothy," said Mrs.Hanway-Harley with a sigh, softly returning to the lines she had originally laid out, "Count Storri, in the most delicate way, like the gentleman and nobleman he is, has asked for your hand." Mrs.Hanway-Harley had read something like this in a magazine, and now reeled it off with tender majesty.

When she spoke of Storri she had quite the empress air.
"For my hand!" said Dorothy, beginning to pant.
Mrs.Hanway-Harley looked up; there was a hardness in Dorothy's tone that was not only new, but unpleasant.