Don't worry, I shall manage all right.
Forget what's happened.
I want you to enjoy the party.'
'Can I press out a dress for you, Madam?' she said, looking up at me with swollen streaming eyes. 'It won't take me a moment.'
'No,' I said, 'don't bother, I'd rather you went, and Clarice…"
'Yes, Madam?'
'Don't — don't say anything about what's just happened.'
'No, Madam.'
She burst into another torrent of weeping.
'Don't let the others see you like that,' I said.
'Go to your bedroom and do something to your face.
There's nothing to cry about, nothing at all.'
Somebody knocked on the door.
Clarice threw me a quick frightened glance.
'Who is it?' I said.
The door opened and Beatrice came into the room.
She came to me at once, a strange, rather ludicrous figure in her Eastern drapery, the bangles jangling on her wrists.
'My dear,' she said, 'my dear,' and held out her hands to me.
Clarice slipped out of the room.
I felt tired suddenly, and unable to cope.
I went and sat down on the bed.
I put my hand up to my head and took off the curled wig.
Beatrice stood watching me.
'Are you all right?' she said.
'You look very white.'
'It's the light,' I said. 'It never gives one any colour.'
'Sit down for a few minutes and you'll be all right,' she said; 'wait, I'll get a glass of water.'
She went into the bathroom, her bangles jangling with her every movement, and then she came back, the glass of water in her hands.
I drank some to please her, not wanting it a bit.
It tasted warm from the tap; she had not let it run.
'Of course I knew at once it was just a terrible mistake,' she said.
'You could not possibly have known, why should you?'
'Known what?' I said.
'Why, the dress, you poor dear, the picture you copied of the girl in the gallery.
It was what Rebecca did at the last fancy dress ball at Manderley.
Identical.
The same picture, the same dress.
You stood there on the stairs, and for one ghastly moment I thought…"
She did not go on with her sentence, she patted me on the shoulder.
'You poor child, how wretchedly unfortunate, how were you to know?'
'I ought to have known,' I said stupidly, staring at her, too stunned to understand.
'I ought to have known.'
'Nonsense, how could you know?
It was not the sort of thing that could possibly enter any of our heads.
Only it was such a shock, you see. We none of us expected it, and Maxim…'
'Yes, Maxim?' I said.
'He thinks, you see, it was deliberate on your part.
You had some bet that you would startle him, didn't you?
Some foolish joke.
And of course, he doesn't understand.