“Where do you think you’ll be this summer?” interposed Edith.
Mrs. Thursby folded her plump hands. “I shouldn’t be surprised if that depended on you,” she said calmly.
“Oh!”
The other woman nodded and went on with a kind of placid deliberation. “My dear, it’s no earthly use beating about the bush any longer, and I’m going to come straight out with it. Very soon after we let this place to you, we took another, didn’t like it, and then I knew we’d been too impulsive about letting Beech Lodge, and I wanted to come back to it, Perkins or no Perkins. I never gave the dreadful woman a thought, because she didn’t seem to matter nearly so much when one had not to look at her. I told my husband about it, but he only laughed, said I had changed my mind too late in the day and the idea was absurd. Later we went over to France for a while.”
“Were you there long?” asked Derrick curiously.
“No, only a few weeks. I couldn’t settle down somehow. Then we read about what happened here, and I knew what was the matter with me. It was just as though that woman had telegraphed me that she was out of the way now, and I might come back.” She paused, with an odd expression on her round face, and glanced approvingly round the room. “So now, if it is possible to arrange it, I want to come. If you’re agreeable, then it’s up to your brother and my husband. So far as I’m concerned, it’s not a matter of money, and James knows that.”
She leaned back with a nod which announced that on this subject she had now emptied her mind, and there was no chance of misunderstanding it on the part of her husband. He was the means to the end. Thursby’s hands were deep in his pockets, and he stared out over the lawn, his brows puckered, as though he were adding up figures, which indeed he was. Edith’s eyes caught those of her brother, and she signaled a message that left no possibility of doubt in his mind. At that he turned to Thursby:
“Shall we have a stroll? I’ve put in quite a lot of new roses, and there’ll be something of a show here next summer.”
The little man nodded jerkily, and they went out. Mrs. Thursby sat up straight and heaved a contented sigh.
“Then, that’ll be all right, if it suits you. Isn’t it all queer?”