“Rose?” she asked at last. “Is she here?”
I nodded.
“If only I could see her without her seeing me!”
“Wait a moment,” I said, and went to the garden to look for Rose, but she had disappeared.
I returned to her mother and began to be practical. She had come in a car, and the first thing to do was to take her bag out and send it back. Then she consented to eat something, and while it was being prepared I had the story.
Ronnie and she had been on their way back to England. He had wanted to see his mother again, and his father’s executors too. But at Marseilles Ronnie had died. It was where her father had died thirty-six years before—how strange a coincidence!
Ronnie’s death followed up a chill, which he had taken, she feared, on a visit to Theodore’s grave. They had gone to see it directly after landing, and Ronnie now lay in the same cemetery, close by. Was not that remarkable?
Since then she had been travelling steadily towards her daughter and me. No one knew of her presence in England but Ronnie’s mother, living now permanently at Torquay, who had been written to.
It was at this point that Rose the other Rose—came back. I saw her across the lawn—her dress shone among the shadows—but her mother’s back being to the window, she could not see her too.
Making some excuse, I slipped out.