“Thank you, Seecombe.”
When they had left the room I did something that I very rarely did.
Only after extreme exhaustion, after riding perhaps, or a hard day’s shoot, or buffeting about in a summer gale in the sailing boat with Ambrose.
I went to the sideboard and poured myself a glass of brandy.
Then I went upstairs, and knocked upon the door of the little boudoir.
8
A low voice, almost inaudible, bade me come in.
Although it was now dark, and the candles had been lit, the curtains were not drawn, and she was sitting on the window seat looking out onto the garden.
Her back was turned to me, her hands were clasped in her lap.
She must have thought me one of the servants, for she did not move when I entered the room.
Don lay before the fire, his muzzle in his paws and the two young dogs beside him.
Nothing had been moved in the room, no drawers opened in the small secretaire, no clothes flung down; there was none of the litter of arrival.
“Good evening,” I said, and my voice sounded strained and unnatural in the little room.
She turned, and rose at once and came towards me.
It was happening so quickly that I had no time, no moment for reflection back upon the hundred images I had formed of her during the past eighteen months.
The woman who had pursued me through the nights and days, haunted my waking hours, disturbing my dreams, was now beside me.
My first feeling was one of shock, almost of stupefaction, that she should be so small.
She barely reached my shoulder.
She had nothing like the height or the figure of Louise.
She was dressed in deep black, which took the color from her hair, and there was lace at her throat and at her wrists.
Her hair was brown, parted in the center with a low knot behind, her features neat and regular.
The only things large about her were the eyes, which at first sight of me widened in sudden recognition, startled, like the eyes of a deer, and from recognition to bewilderment, from bewilderment to pain, almost to apprehension.
I saw the color come into her face and go again, and I think I was as great a shock to her as she was to me.
It would be hazardous to say which of us was the more nervous, which the more ill-at-ease.
I stared down at her and she looked up at me, and it was a moment before either of us spoke.
When we did, it was to speak together.
“I hope you are rested,” was my stiff contribution, and hers,
“I owe you an apology.”
She followed up my opening swiftly with
“Thank you, Philip, yes,” and moving towards the fire she sat down on a low stool beside it and motioned me to the chair opposite.
Don, the old retriever, stretched and yawned, and pulling himself onto his haunches placed his head upon her lap.
“This is Don, isn’t it?” she said, putting her hand on his nose.
“Was he really fourteen last birthday?”
“Yes,” I said, “his birthday is a week before my own.”
“You found him in a piecrust with your breakfast,” she said.
“Ambrose was hiding behind the screen in the dining room, and watched you open up the pie.
He told me he would never forget the look of amazement on your face when you lifted the crust and Don struggled out.
You were ten years old, and it was the first of April.”
She looked up from patting Don, and smiled at me; and to my great discomfiture I saw tears in her eyes, gone upon the instant.
“I owe you an apology for not coming down to dinner,” she said.
“You had made so much preparation, just for me, and must have come hurrying home long before you wanted.
But I was very tired. I would have made a poor sort of companion.
It seemed to me that it would be easier for you if you dined alone.”
I thought of how I had tramped about the estate from east to west so as to keep her waiting, and I said nothing.
One of the younger dogs woke up and licked my hand.
I pulled his ears to give myself employment.
“Seecombe told me how busy you were, and how much there is to do,” she said.
“I don’t want you to feel hampered in any way by my sudden unexpected visit.
I can find my way about alone, and shall be happy doing so.
You mustn’t make any sort of alteration in your day tomorrow because of me.