Was she to continue the business or to sell it?
With the fortunes of her father and her aunt, and the economies of twenty years, she had more than sufficient means.
She was indeed rich, according to the standards of the Square; nay, wealthy!
Therefore she was under no material compulsion to keep the shop.
Moreover, to keep it would mean personal superintendence and the burden of responsibility, from which her calm lethargy shrank.
On the other hand, to dispose of the business would mean the breaking of ties and leaving the premises: and from this also she shrank.
Young Lawton, without being asked, had advised her to sell.
But she did not want to sell.
She wanted the impossible: that matters should proceed in the future as in the past, that Samuel's death should change nothing save in her heart.
In the meantime Miss Insull was priceless.
Constance thoroughly understood one side of the shop; but Miss Insull understood both, and the finance of it also.
Miss Insull could have directed the establishment with credit, if not with brilliance. She was indeed directing it at that moment.
Constance, however, felt jealous of Miss Insull; she was conscious of a slight antipathy towards the faithful one.
She did not care to be in the hands of Miss Insull.
There were one or two customers at the millinery counter.
They greeted her with a deplorable copiousness of tact.
Most tactfully they avoided any reference to Constance's loss; but by their tone, their glances, at Constance and at each other, and their heroically restrained sighs, they spread desolation as though they had been spreading ashes instead of butter on bread.
The assistants, too, had a special demeanour for the poor lone widow which was excessively trying to her.
She wished to be natural, and she would have succeeded, had they not all of them apparently conspired together to make her task impossible.
She moved away to the other side of the shop, to Samuel's desk, at which he used to stand, staring absently out of the little window into King Street while murmurously casting figures.
She lighted the gas-jet there, arranged the light exactly to suit her, and then lifted the large flap of the desk and drew forth some account books.
"Miss Insull!" she called, in a low, clear voice, with a touch of haughtiness and a touch of command in it.
The pose, a comical contradiction of Constance's benevolent character, was deliberately adopted; it illustrated the effects of jealousy on even the softest disposition.
Miss Insull responded.
She had no alternative but to respond.
And she gave no sign of resenting her employer's attitude.
But then Miss Insull seldom did give any sign of being human.
The customers departed, one after another, obsequiously sped by the assistants, who thereupon lowered the gases somewhat, according to secular rule; and in the dim eclipse, as they restored boxes to shelves, they could hear the tranquil, regular, half-whispered conversation of the two women at the desk, discussing accounts; and then the chink of gold.
Suddenly there was an irruption.
One of the assistants sprang instinctively to the gas; but on perceiving that the disturber of peace was only a slatternly girl, hatless and imperfectly clean, she decided to leave the gas as it was, and put on a condescending, suspicious demeanour.
"If you please, can I speak to the missis?" said the girl, breathlessly.
She seemed to be about eighteen years of age, fat and plain. Her blue frock was torn, and over it she wore a rough brown apron, caught up at one corner to the waist.
Her bare forearms were of brick-red colour.
"What is it?" demanded the assistant.
Miss Insull looked over her shoulder across the shop.
"It must be Maggie's--Mrs. Hollins's daughter!" said Miss Insull under her breath.
"What can she want?" said Constance, leaving the desk instantly; and to the girl, who stood sturdily holding her own against the group of assistants:
"You are Mrs. Hollins's daughter, aren't you?"
"Yes, mum."
"What's your name?"
"Maggie, mum.
And, if you please, mother's sent me to ask if you'll kindly give her a funeral card."
"A funeral card?"
"Yes.
Of Mr. Povey.
She's been expecting of one, and she thought as how perhaps you'd forgotten it, especially as she wasn't asked to the funeral."
The girl stopped.
Constance perceived that by mere negligence she had seriously wounded the feelings of Maggie, senior.
The truth was, she had never thought of Maggie.
She ought to have remembered that funeral cards were almost the sole ornamentation of Maggie's abominable cottage.