She had scribbled it in pencil after breakfast.
I knocked at your door but had no answer so gather you've taken my advice and are sleeping off last night.
Giles is anxious to get back early as they have rung up from home to say he's wanted to take somebody's place in a cricket match, and it starts at two.
How he is going to see the ball after all the champagne he put away last night heaven only knows!
I'm feeling a bit weak in the legs, but slept like a top.
Frith says Maxim was down to an early breakfast, and there's now no sign of him!
So please give him our love, and many thanks to you both for our evening, which we thoroughly enjoyed.
Don't think any more about the dress. [This last was heavily underlined] Yours affectionately, Bee. [And a postscript] You must both come over and see us soon.
She had scribbled nine-thirty a.m. at the top of the paper, and it was now nearly half past eleven.
They had been gone about two hours.
They would be home by now, — Beatrice with her suitcase unpacked, going out into her garden and taking up her ordinary routine, and Giles preparing for his match, renewing the whipping on his bat.
In the afternoon Beatrice would change into a cool frock and a shady hat and watch Giles play cricket.
They would have tea afterwards in a tent, Giles very hot and red in the face, Beatrice laughing and talking to her friends.
'Yes, we went over for the dance at Manderley; it was great fun.
I wonder Giles was able to run a yard.'
Smiling at Giles, patting him on the back.
They were both middle-aged and unromantic.
They had been married for twenty years and had a grown-up son who was going to Oxford.
They were very happy.
Their marriage was a success.
It had not failed after three months as mine had done.
I could not go on sitting in my bedroom any longer.
The maids would want to come and do the room.
Perhaps Clarice would not have noticed about Maxim's bed after all.
I rumpled it, to make it look as though he had slept there.
I did not want the housemaids to know, if Clarice had not told them.
I had a bath and dressed, and went downstairs.
The men had taken up the floor already in the hall and the flowers had been carried away.
The music stands were gone from the gallery.
The band must have caught an early train.
The gardeners were sweeping the lawns and the drive clear of the spent fireworks.
Soon there would be no trace left of the fancy dress ball at Manderley.
How long the preparations had seemed, and how short and swift the clearance now.
I remembered the salmon lady standing by the drawing-room door with her plate of chicken, and it seemed to me a thing I must have fancied, or something that had happened very long ago.
Robert was polishing the table in the dining-room.
He was normal again, stolid, dull, not the fey excited creature of the past few weeks.
'Good morning, Robert,' I said.
'Good morning, Madam.'
'Have you seen Mr de Winter anywhere?'
'He went out soon after breakfast, Madam, before Major and Mrs Lacy were down.
He has not been in since.'
'You don't know where he went?'
'No, Madam, I could not say.'
I wandered back again into the hall.
I went through the drawing-room to the morning-room.
Jasper rushed at me and licked my hands in a frenzy of delight as if I had been away for a long time.
He had spent the evening on Clarice's bed and I had not seen him since teatime yesterday.
Perhaps the hours had been as long for him as they had for me.
I picked up the telephone and asked for the number of the estate office.
Perhaps Maxim was with Frank.