'Miss Wrenner? Oh! Didn't I tell you—Miss Wrenner isn't going to act—they've got someone else instead.'
CHAPTER XXVIII
Anne Returns
It was about six o'clock, and Hyacinth was sitting in her boudoir alone. It was a lovely room and she herself looked lovely, but, for a bride of four months, a little discontented. She was wondering why she was not happier. What was this unreasonable misery, this constant care, this anxious jealousy that seemed to poison her very existence? It was as intangible as a shadow, but it was always there. Hyacinth constantly felt that there was something in Cecil that escaped her, something that she missed. And yet he was kind, affectionate, even devoted.
Sometimes when they spent evenings at home together, which were calm and peaceful and should have been happy, the girl would know, with the second-sight of love, that he was thinking about Eugenia. And this phantom, of which she never spoke to him and could not have borne him to know of, tormented her indescribably. It seemed like a spell that she knew not how to break. It was only a thought, yet how much it made her suffer! Giving way for the moment to the useless and futile bitterness of her jealousy, she had leant her head on the cushion of the little sofa where she sat, when, with a sudden sensation that she was no longer alone, she raised it again and looked up.
Standing near the door she saw a tall, thin figure with a rather wooden face and no expression—a queer figure, oddly dressed in a mackintosh and a golf-cap.
'Why do you burn so much electric light?' Anne said dryly, in a reproachful voice, as she turned a button on the wall.
Hyacinth sprang up with a cry of surprise.
Anne hardly looked at her and walked round the room.
'Sit down. I want to look at your new room. Silk walls and Dresden china. I suppose this is what is called gilded luxury. Do you ever see that the servants dust it, or do they do as they like?'