II
Miss Grig
Lilian, having fulfilled the prophecy of the parlour-maid and felt better after drinking the tea, had just released her shoulders from her dust cloak and dropped her forlorn little hat on the carpet, when she heard a firm, light tap.
"May I come in?"
Miss Grig entered and shut the door carefully.
Lilian tried to get up from the low easy chair.
"Please! Please! Don't move. You must be exhausted."
Miss Grig advanced and shook hands. Lilian raised her eyes and lowered them. Miss Grig was shockingly, incredibly aged. In eight months she had become an old woman and a tragic woman. (The lawyer had omitted to furnish Lilian with this information.) But she was not less plump. Indeed, owing to the triumph of her instinctive negligence in attire over an artificial coquetry no longer stimulated by the presence of a worshipped man, she seemed stouter and looser than ever. She was dressed for the street.
Lilian, extremely perturbed, looked at the dilapidation and thought: "I have done this." She also thought: "This is the woman that turned me out of my situation because she fancied Felix was after me--not me after Felix. What a cruel shame it was!" And thus, though she felt guilty, she felt far more resentful than guilty. What annoyed her was that she felt so young and callow in face of the old woman, and that she was renewing the humiliating sensations of their previous interview. She felt like the former typist, and the wedding-ring on her finger had somehow no force to charm away this feeling so uncomfortable and illogical. She was not aware that her own appearance, pathetic in its unshapely mingling of the girl and the matron, was in turn impressively shocking to Miss Grig.
"I thought I ought just to say good-bye to you before leaving," said Miss Grig in a calm, polite but quavering voice.