CHAPTER XXXII
A MAN MUST ACT AS HE THINKS BEST
Louisa knew the flat in Exhibition Road very well. She had helped Edie to furnish it, and to make it pretty and cosey, for Edie's passion was for dogs and for golf; drawing-room chairs and saucepans were not much in her line. So Louisa had chosen practically everything—the piano, as well as the coal-scuttles, and every stick of furniture in Luke's room.
To-night she went up the well-known stairs very slowly: she ached so in every limb that she could scarcely walk. She seemed to have aged twenty years in two days.
Edie was sitting alone in the pretty drawing room buried in a capacious arm-chair, her hands folded before her. The room was in darkness save for the glow of the firelight. She jumped up when Colonel Harris and Louisa were announced and the neat servant in black dress and smart cap and apron switched on the electric light.
"Oh," said poor little Edie impetuously, "I am so thankful you've come!"
She ran up to Louisa and put her arms round her, kissing her.
"Do come and sit with me," she continued, loath to relinquish Colonel Harris's hand after she had shaken it, "I feel that in this solitude I shall go dotty."
Whilst she spoke, she detached with nervous, febrile movements Louisa's fur from round her neck, and dragged the older woman nearer to herself and to the fire. Then she threw herself down on the hearth rug, squatting there in front of the fire, with nervy fingers picking at the fringe of the rug. Her cheeks were red and blotchy with traces of recent tears, her hair, towzled and damp, clung to her moist temples. Suddenly she burst into a torrent of weeping.
"Oh, Lou! what does it all mean?" she exclaimed between heavy sobs. "What does it all mean? They say Luke has murdered that odious Philip! and I have been cooped up here for two days now, not daring to go out! ashamed to face any one! and Luke—Luke—oh!"
The outburst was almost hysterical. The young girl was obviously fearfully overwrought, and had endured a severe nerve-strain by not having the means of giving vent to her feelings. Colonel Harris, with all an Englishman's horror of feminine scenes, was clearing his throat, looking supremely uncomfortable all the time.