On this soft autumnal day, the three bow windows which opened on the terrace at the back of the house were open, and every now and then the white curtains faintly fluttered, and the leaves of the creepers which luxuriously festooned the window-frames gently rustled. Far above the height of the central window, an aspiring passion-flower, rich in the stiff, majestic, symbolical blossom, stretched its branches, until they wreathed the window just above the centre bow, and aided an impertinent rose to look into the room. They had looked in ever since the one had blossom and the other leaves, but they had seen nothing there that lived or moved.
The middle room, above the suite of drawing-rooms--whose rosewood furniture, whose Ambusson carpets, and whose sparkling girandoles formed the chief delight and pride of Mrs. Carteret's not particularly capacious heart--had not been used since Margaret Carteret had left her home to follow the fortunes of her lover.
That such was the case was not due to any sentiment on Mr. Carteret's part, or any spite on that of his wife. If the former had happened to want additional space for any of his drying or "curing" processes, he would have invaded his daughter's forsaken room without the slightest hesitation, and, indeed, without recalling the circumstance of her former occupation, of his own accord; while it was quite safe from interference on the part of the latter for another and a different reason.
Mrs. Carteret's rooms were perfectly comfortable and sufficient, and she never had "staying company." She knew better. She was quite sufficiently hospitable without inflicting that trouble on herself, and she had no notion of it. Indeed, she never had any notion of doing anything which she did not thoroughly like, or of putting up with any kind of inconvenience for a moment if it were possible to free herself from it; and she had generally found it very possible. Life had rolled along wonderfully smoothly, on the whole, for Mrs. Carteret. She possessed one advantage which does not always fall to the lot of supremely selfish and heartless people--she had an easy temper.
It is refreshing sometimes to observe how much utterly selfish people, whose sole object in life is to secure pleasure and to banish pain, suffer by the infliction upon themselves of their own temper. But Mrs. Carteret was bucklered against fate, even on that side. She took excellent and successful care that no one else should annoy her, and she never annoyed herself. It would have afforded a philosophic observer, indeed, some congenial occupation of mind to divine from what possible quarter, save that of severe bodily pain, discomfiture could reach Mrs. Carteret. She was very well off, perfectly healthy, wholly indifferent to every existing human being except herself and her cousin, had everything her own way as regarded both objects of affection, had got rid of her stepdaughter, and had a very comfortable settlement "in case anything should happen"--according to the queer formula adopted in speaking of the only absolute certainty in human events--to Mr. Carteret.
This seemingly-invulnerable person had no need of Margaret's room then, and when James Dugdale said to her,
"If you don't want that middle room over the drawing-room for any particular purpose, I should be glad to have the use of it for mounting my drawings, and so on; the light is very good," she said at once,
"O yes; you mean Margaret's room, do you not? I don't want it in the least. I will have it put to rights for you at once; it is full of all her trumpery."
No third person listening to the two would ever have discerned that any matter of feeling, or even embarrassment, had any connection with the subject under mention, still less that the "Margaret" in question had so lately left the home of her girlhood on a desperate quest, which the woman who spoke of her complacently believed to be desperate.
"Yes, I mean that room," said James Dugdale in a careless tone; "but pray don't have anything in it touched. I will see to all that myself; in fact, presuming on your permission, I have put a lot of my things in there, and the servants would play the deuce if they meddled with them. I may keep the key, Sibylla, I suppose?"