It's a shame for Mr de Winter.'
'I wouldn't stand for it, not from a chit like her.'
'Maybe it's not true at all.'
'It's true all right.
They're full of it up at the house.'
One to the other. This one to the next.
A smile, a wink, a shrug of the shoulder.
One group, and then another group.
And then spreading to the guests who walked on the terrace and strolled across the lawns.
The couple who in three hours' time would sit in those chairs beneath me in the rose-garden.
'Do you suppose it's true what I heard?'
'What did you hear?'
'Why, that there's nothing wrong with her at all, they've had a colossal row, and she won't appear!'
'I say!'
A lift of the eyebrows, a long whistle.
'I know. Well, it does look rather odd, don' t you think?
What I mean is, people don't suddenly for no reason have violent headaches.
I call the whole thing jolly fishy.'
'I thought he looked a bit grim,'
'So did I.'
'Of course I have heard before the marriage is not a wild success.'
'Oh, really?'
'H'm. Several people have said so.
They say he's beginning to realise he's made a big mistake.
She's nothing to look at, you know.'
'No, I've heard there's nothing much to her.
Who was she?'
'Oh, no one at all.
Some pick-up in the south of France, a nursery gov., or something.'
'Good Lord!'
'I know.
And when you think of Rebecca…"
I went on staring at the empty chairs.
The salmon sky had turned to grey.
Above my head was the evening star.
In the woods beyond the rose-garden the birds were making their last little rustling noises before nightfall.
A lone gull flew across the sky.
I went away from the window, back to the bed again.
I picked up the white dress I had left on the floor and put it back in the box with the tissue paper.
I put the wig back in its box too.
Then I looked in one of my cupboards for the little portable iron I used to have in Monte Carlo for Mrs Van Hopper's dresses.
It was lying at the back of a shelf with some woollen jumpers I had not worn for a long time.
The iron was (The of those universal kinds that go on any voltage and I fitted it to the plug in the wall.
I began to iron the blue dress that Beatrice had taken from the wardrobe, slowly, methodically, as I used to iron Mrs Van Hopper's dresses in Monte Carlo.
When I had finished I laid the dress ready on the bed.
Then I cleaned the make-up off my face that I had put on for the fancy dress.
I combed my hair, and washed my hands.
I put on the blue dress and the shoes that went with it.
I might have been my old self again, going down to the lounge of the hotel with Mrs Van Hopper.
I opened the door of my room and went along the corridor.