V
CHARLOTTE LOVELL, at the sound of her cousin’s step, lifted a fevered face from the pillow.
The bedroom, dim and close, smelt of eau de Cologne and fresh linen. Delia, blinking in from the bright winter sun, had to feel her way through a twilight obstructed by dark mahogany.
“I want to see your face, Chatty: unless your head aches too much?”
Charlotte signed “No,” and Delia drew back the heavy window curtains and let in a ray of light. In it she saw the girl’s head, livid against the bed-linen, the brick-rose circles again visible under darkly shadowed lids. Just so, she remembered, poor cousin So-and-so had looked the week before she sailed for Italy!
“Delia!” Charlotte breathed.
Delia drew near the bed, and stood looking down at her cousin with new eyes. Yes: it had been easy enough, the night before, to dispose of Chatty’s future as if it were her own. But now?
“Darling—”
“Oh, begin, please,” the girl interrupted, “or I shall know that what’s coming is too dreadful!”
“Chatty, dearest, if I promised you too much—”