It was a thin, cheap envelope bearing a London postmark, and Caroline drew out a flimsy sheet of paper.

'I must get my gla.s.ses,' she said. Her voice was agitated. 'No, no, I can manage without them. The writing is immense, but faint. It's from that woman.' She looked up, showing a face drawn and blotched with ugly colour. 'It's to say that Reginald is dead.'

Mrs. Reginald Mallett had written the letter on the day of her husband's funeral, and Caroline's tears for her brother were stemmed by her indignation with his wife. She had purposely made it impossible for his relatives to attend the ceremony.

'No,' Sophia said, 'the poor thing was distressed. We mustn't blame her.'

'And such a letter!' Caroline flicked it with a disdainful finger.

Rose picked up the sheet. 'I don't see what else she could have said.

I think it's dignified--a plain statement. Why should you expect more?

You have never taken any notice of her.'

'Certainly not! And Reginald never suggested it. Of course he was ashamed, poor boy. However, I am now going to write to her, asking if she is in need, and enclosing a cheque. I feel some responsibility for the child. She is half a Mallett, and the Malletts have always been loyal to the family.'

'Yes, dear, we'll send a cheque, and--shouldn't we?--a few kind words.

She will value them.'

'She'll value the money more,' Caroline said grimly.

Here she was wrong, for the cheque was immediately returned. Mrs.

Mallett and her daughter were able to support themselves without help.

'Then we need think no more about them,' Caroline said, concealing her annoyance, 'and I shall be able to afford a new dinner dress. Black sequins, I thought, Sophia--and we must give a dinner for the Sales.'

'Caroline, no, you forget. We mustn't entertain for a little while.'

'Upon my word, I did forget. But it's no use pretending. It really isn't quite like a death in the family, is it? Poor dear Reginald! I was very fond of him, but half our friends believe he has been dead for years. I shall wear black for three months, of course, but a little dinner to the Sales would not be out of place. We have a duty to the living as well as to the dead.'

Leaving her stepsisters to argue this point, Rose went upstairs and looked into Reginald's old room. She had known very little of him, but she was sorry he was dead, sorry there was no longer a chance of his presence in the house, of meeting him on the stairs, very late for breakfast and quite oblivious of the inconvenience he was causing, and on his lips some remark which no one else would have made.

His room had not been occupied for some time, but it seemed emptier than before; the mirror gave back a reflection of polished furniture and vacancy; the bed looked smooth and cold enough for a corpse. No personal possessions were strewn about, and the room itself felt chilly.

She was glad to enter her own, where beauty and luxury lived together.

The carpet was soft to her feet, a small wood fire burned in the grate, for the evening promised to be cold, and the severe lines of the furniture were clean and exquisite against the white walls. A pale soft dressing-gown hung across a chair, a little handkerchief, as fine as lace, lay crumpled on a table, there was a discreet gleam of silver and tortoisesh.e.l.l. This, at least, was the room of a living person.

Yet, as she stood before the cheval-gla.s.s, studying herself after the habit of the Malletts, she thought perhaps she was less truly living than Reginald in his grave. He left a memory of animation, of sin, of charm; he had injured other people all his life, but they regretted him and, presumably, he had had his pleasure out of their pain. And what was she, standing there? A negatively virtuous young woman, without enough desire of any kind to impel her to trample over feelings, creeds and codes. If she died that moment, it would be said of her that she was beautiful, and that was all. Reginald, with his greed, his heartlessness, his indifference to all that did not serve him, would not be forgotten: people would sigh and smile at the mention of his name, hate him and wish him back. She envied him; she wished she could feel in swift, pa.s.sionate gusts as he had done, with the force and the forgetfulness of a pa.s.sing wind. His life, flecked with disgrace, must also have been rich with temporary but memorable beauty. The exterior of her own was all beauty, of person and surroundings, but within there seemed to be only a cold waste.

She had been tempted the other afternoon, and she had resisted with what seemed to her a despicable ease: she had not really cared, and she felt that the necessity to struggle, even the collapse of her resistance, would have argued better for her than her self-possession.

And for a moment she wished she had married Francis Sales. She would at least have had some definite work in the world; she could have kept him to his farming, as Mrs. Sales had set herself to do; she would have had a home to see to and daily interviews with the cook! She laughed at this decline in her ambition; she no longer expected the advent of the colossal figure of her young dreams; and she knew this was the hour when she ought to strike out a new way for herself, to leave this place which offered her nothing but ease and a continuous, foredoomed effort after enjoyment; but she also knew that she would not go. She had not the energy nor the desire. She would drift on, never submerged by any pa.s.sion, keeping her head calmly above water, looking coldly at the interminable sea. This was her conviction, but she was not without a secret hope that she might at last be carried to some unknown island, odorous, surprising and her own, where she would, for the first time, experience some kind of excess.

-- 4

The little dinner was duly given to the Sales. The Sales returned the compliment; and Mrs. Batty, not to be outdone, offered what could only adequately be described as a banquet in honour of the bride; there was a general revival of hospitality, and the Malletts were at every function. This was Caroline's reward for her instructed enthusiasm for Christabel Sales, and before long the black sequin dress gave way to a grey brocade and a purple satin, and the period of mourning was at an end. For Rose, these entertainments were only interesting because the Sales were there, and she hardly knew at what moment annoyance began to mingle definitely with her pity for the little lady with the wary eyes, or when the annoyance almost overcame the pity.

It might have been at a dinner-party when Christabel, seated at the right hand of a particularly facetious host, let out her high chromatic laughter incessantly, and the hostess, leaning towards Francis, told him with the tenderness of an elderly woman whose own romance lies far behind her, that it was a pleasure to see Mrs. Sales so happy. He murmured something in response and, as he looked up and met the gaze of Rose, she smiled at him and saw his eyes darken with feeling, or with thought.

After dinner he sought her out. She had known that would happen: she had been avoiding it for weeks, but it was useless to play at hide-and-seek with the inevitable, and she calmly watched him approach.

'Why did you laugh?' he asked at once, in his old, angry fashion. 'You were laughing at me.'

'No, I smiled.'

'Ah, you're not so free with your smiles that they have no meaning.'

'Perhaps not, but I don't know what the meaning was.'

'I believe you've been laughing at me ever since I came back.'

'Indeed, I haven't. Why should I?'

'G.o.d knows,' he answered with a shrug; 'I never do understand what people laugh at.'

'You're too self-conscious, Francis.'

'Only with you,' he said.

'Somebody is going to sing,' she warned him as a gaunt girl went towards the piano; and sinking on to a convenient and sheltered couch, they resigned themselves to listen--or to endure. From that corner Rose had a view of the long room, mediocre in its decoration, mediocre in its occupants. She could see her host standing before the fire, swinging his eyegla.s.ses on a cord and gazing at the cornice as the song proceeded. She could see Christabel's neck and shoulders and the back of her fair head. Beside her a plump matron had her face suitably composed; three bored young men were leaning against a wall.

The music jangled, the voice shrieked a false emotion, and Rose's eyebrows rose with the voice. It was dull, it was dreary, it was a waste of time, yet what else, Rose questioned, could she do with time, of which there was so much? She could not find an answer, and there rose at that moment a chorus of thanks and a gentle clapping of hands.

The gaunt girl had finished her song and, poking her chin, returned to her seat. The room buzzed with chatter; it seemed that only Francis and Rose were silent. She turned to look at him.

'This is awful,' he said.

'No worse than usual.'

'When do you think we shall have exhausted Radstowe hospitality? And the worst of it is we have to give dinners ourselves, and the same things happen every time.'

'I find it soporific,' said Rose.

'I'd rather be soporific in an arm-chair with a pipe.'

'This is one of the penalties of marriage,' Rose said lightly.

'Look here, I'm giving Christabel another jumping lesson to-morrow.

I've put some hurdles up. Will you come? She's getting on very well.

I'll take her hunting before long.'

'Does she like it?'

'Oh, rather! My word, it would have been a catastrophe if she hadn't taken to it.' He paused, considering the terrible situation from which he had been saved. 'Can't imagine what I should have done. But she's never satisfied. She's beginning to jeer at the old brown horse. I've seen a grey mare that might do for her,' and he went on to enumerate the animal's points.

Rose said, 'Why don't you let her have her first season with the old horse? He knows his business. He'll take care of her.'

'She wouldn't approve of that. I tell you, she's ambitious. I'll go and fetch her and you'll hear for yourself.'

She watched him bending over his wife, and saw Christabel rise and slip a hand under his arm. The action was a little like that of a young woman taking a walk with her young man, but it betokened a confidence which roused a slight feeling of envy and sadness in Rose's heart.