‘You talk as if they were outbuildings, mother,’ he said, with a faint, wretched smile.
‘Outbuildings! Sepulchres,’ said Mrs. Colquhoun. ‘Abodes of corruption. And nothing you can do in the way of whitening them will hide—will hide——’
She was becoming hysterical; in her life she had never been that. Words were failing her; in her life they had never done that. She must grip on to herself, she must shut her mouth tight. It frightened her, the behaviour of her hitherto absolutely reliable body.
Her son went out of the room and left her standing there.
VII
It was the very morning after this that Stephen was late for breakfast for the first time for years, and Virginia got down before him and found a postcard in her mother’s handwriting among the letters, with a picture on it of some place in the Isle of Wight and these words: You have helped me to happiness. Catherine Monckton.
She stared at it puzzled. She was still more puzzled when, turning it over again and looking at the address, she saw it was for Stephen, not for her.
Stephen had helped her mother to happiness? It would be just like him, of course—their reconciliation the night before had been utter and wonderful—but how? What had he had to do with it? He who only now, only yesterday, had come round to not disapproving any longer of the marriage?
She was still holding the postcard in her hand, vainly trying to make head or tail of it, when he came in.
‘It seems,’ she said, going to meet him with the quick steps and the radiant smile of love that is very proud, ‘that I still don’t know all your goodness, dear husband.’