"I'm not surprised. You look as if you might be a General's daughter. Well, then, you don't need to have your duties defined to you. You will have to keep the house--to run it, in fact--pay the servants' wages and prevent them from worrying me. You will write any letters I want, and you will drive out with me when I do go out, but that won't be often now that the winter is coming on. Then, you will have to dine with Mr. Bodley-Chard in the evening and keep him amused when he is in the house."
"Oh!" said Isla with a small gasp, "will you tell me quite what that means?"
"It means just what it says," answered Mrs. Chard with her wandering, somewhat stupid smile. "It is slow for him at home, of course, for I am hardly ever able to be down."
"Have you been out of health a long while?"
"Yes--about two years now. I have got worse in the last six months. Perhaps I shall not live long. I don't mind. I haven't had much happiness. People soon get tired of a dull old woman, don't they?"
"But why be dull?" asked Isla cheerfully. "You have the means of making life pleasant."
"But there is nobody to care, you see."
Isla wondered about Mr. Bodley-Chard, but she did not ask any questions.
She felt sorry for the woman who, in the midst of her luxurious surroundings, looked like a person from whom all the zest for life had departed, leaving her with a withered heart.
One thing interested her--she felt that she would like to see Mr. Bodley-Chard, possibly because in him might be found a partial solution of the problem of the heaviness of his wife's life.