Aline came downstairs to the long drawing-room, where Mrs. Clephane was sitting alone in a litter of fallen rose-petals, grains of rice and ends of wedding-cake ribbon. Beyond, in the dining-room, the servants were moving away the small tables, and carrying off the silver in green-lined baskets.
The house-keeper had come in to give the butler the address of the hospital to which Mrs. Fenno wished the flowers to be sent, and a footman was already removing the baskets and bouquets from the drawing-room.
“Madame will be much more comfortable upstairs than in all this untidiness; and Mr. Landers has telephoned to ask if he may see Madame in about half an hour.”
Aline, of course, knew everything; news reached her by every pore, as it circulates through an Eastern bazaar. Erect in the handsome dress that Mrs. Clephane had given her for the wedding, she smiled drily but approvingly upon her mistress. It was understood that Mr. Landers was un bon parti; and the servants’ hall knew him to be generous. So did Aline, whose gown was fastened by the diamond arrow he had offered her that morning.
“There’s a nice fire in Madame’s sitting-room,” she added persuasively.
Kate Clephane sat motionless, without looking up. She heard what the maid was saying, and could have repeated her exact words; but they conveyed no meaning.
“Madame must come up,” Aline again insisted.
The humiliation of being treated like a sick person at length roused Mrs. Clephane, and she got to her feet and followed the maid. On the way upstairs she said to her: “Presently I will tell you what I shall need on the steamer.” Then she turned into the sitting-room, and Aline softly closed the door on her.
The fire was burning briskly; Anne’s last bunch of violets stood on the low table near the lounge. Outside the windows the winter light was waning. Kate Clephane, sitting down on the lounge, remembered that the room had worn that same look of soothing intimacy on the day when Anne had first led her into it, little more than a year ago; and she remembered that, then, also, Fred Landers had joined her there, hurriedly summoned to reassure her loneliness. It was curious, in what neatly recurring patterns events often worked themselves out.
The door opened and he came in. He still wore his wedding clothes, and the dark morning coat and the pearl in his tie suited him, gave him a certain air of self-confidence and importance. He looked like a man who would smooth one’s way, manage all the tiresome details of life admirably, without fuss or bluster. The small point of consciousness left alive in Kate Clephane registered the fact, and was dimly comforted by it. Steamer chairs, for instance, and the right table in a ventilated corner of the dining-saloon—one wouldn’t have to bother about anything....