Her impulse was to let go and sink into the helplessness of tears, to be overwhelmed by an unconquerable loneliness; but the Celtic courage in her, added to that ancient native pride which prevents one woman from giving way before another woman towards whom she bears jealousy, prevented her from showing the weakness she felt.
Instead, it roused her vanity and made her choose to sit down, so disguising perceptibly the disparity of height which gave Kitty an advantage over her and made the Young Doctor like some menacing Polynesian god.
Both these people had an influence and authority in Mona Crozier's life which now outweighed the advantage wealth gave her.

Her wealth had not kept her husband beside her when delicate and perfumed tyranny began to flutter its banners of control over him.

Her fortune had driven him forth when her beauty and her love ought to have kept him close to her, whatever fate might bring to their door, or whatever his misfortune or the catastrophe falling on him.

It was all deeply humiliating, and the inward dejection made her now feel that her body was the last effort of a failing creative power.

So she sat down instead of standing up in a vain effort at retrieval.
The Young Doctor sat down also, but Kitty did not, and in her buoyant youth and command of the situation she seemed Amazonian to Mona's eyes.
It must be said for Kitty that she remained standing only because a restlessness had seized her which was not present when she was with Mona in Crozier's room.