Mrs.Morres's smile grew more inscrutable.
"It amuses me," she said, talking loudly, so that her words might reach Mary through the storm of the music, "to find that Agatha is just a woman, after all.

It amuses me--and yet--it had been happier for you and me if she had contented herself with the unrealities of life a little longer." Mary did not understand at the moment.

She began to understand a little later when Mr.Jardine came.

The novel, after all, had not been finished.

For the last week or so before the visitor arrived her Ladyship had apparently lost interest in it.
"My brain has dried up, Mary," she said.