From this, too, she presently recovered. After all, marriage was marriage, and you did things in marriage that you would never dream of doing single. She averted her eyes from the washstand. The last thing she wanted to do was to become familiar with Wemyss's sponge.
Her eyes, growing more and more determined in their benevolence, gazed out of the window. How the days were lengthening. And really a beautiful look-out, with the late afternoon light reflected on the hills across the river. Birds, too, twittering in the garden,—everything most pleasant and complete. And such a nice big window. Lots of air and light. It reached nearly to the floor. Two housemaids at least, and strong ones, would be needed to open or shut it,—ah no, there were cords. A thought struck her: This couldn't be the room, that couldn't be the window, where——
She averted her eyes from the window, and fixed them on what seemed to be the only satisfactory resting-place for them, the contented face on the pillow. Dear little loved face. And the dear, pretty hair,—how pretty young hair was, so soft and thick. No, of course it wasn't the window; that tragic room was probably not used at all now. How in the world had the child got such a cold. She could hear by her breathing that her chest was stuffed up, but evidently it wasn't worrying her, or she wouldn't in her sleep look so much pleased. Yes; that room was either shut up now and never used, or—she couldn't help being struck by yet another thought—it was a spare room. If so, Miss Entwhistle said to herself, it would no doubt be her fate to sleep in it. Dear me, she thought, taken aback.
But from this also she presently recovered; and remembering her determination to eject all prejudices merely remarked to herself, 'Well, well.' And, after a pause, was able to add benevolently, 'A house of varied interest.'
XXVII
Later on in the dining-room, when she was reluctantly eating the meal prepared for her—Lucy still slept, or she would have asked to be allowed to have a biscuit by her bedside—Miss Entwhistle said to Chesterton, who attended her, Would she let her know when Mr. Wemyss telephoned, as she wished to speak to him.
She was feeling more and more uneasy as time passed as to what Everard would think of her uninvited presence in his house. It was natural; but would he think so? What wasn't natural was for her to feel uneasy, seeing that the house was also Lucy's, and that the child's face had hardly had room enough on it for the width of her smile of welcome. There, however, it was,—Miss Entwhistle felt like an interloper. It was best to face things. She not only felt like an interloper but, in Everard's eyes, she was an interloper. This was the situation: His wife had a cold—a bad cold, but not anything serious; nobody had sent for his wife's aunt; nobody had asked her to come; and here she was. If that, in Everard's eyes, wasn't being an interloper Miss Entwhistle was sure he wouldn't know one if he saw one.
In her life she had read many books, and was familiar with those elderly relatives frequently to be met in them, and usually female, who intrude into a newly married ménage and make themselves objectionable to one of the parties by sympathising with the other one. There was no cause for sympathy here, and if there ever should be Miss Entwhistle would certainly never sympathise except from a neutral place. She wouldn't come into a man's house, and in the very act of being nourished by his food sympathise with his wife; she would sympathise from London. Her honesty of intention, her single-mindedness, were, she knew, complete. She didn't feel, she knew she wasn't, in the least like these relatives in books, and yet as she sat in Everard's chair—obviously it was his; the upholstered seat was his very shape, inverted—she was afraid, indeed she was certain, he would think she was one of them.
There she was, she thought, come unasked, sitting in his place, eating his food. He usedn't to like her; would he like her any the better for this? From a desire not to have meals of his she had avoided tea, but she hadn't been able to avoid dinner, and with each dish set before her—dishes produced surprisingly, as she couldn't but observe, at the end of an arm thrust to the minute through a door—she felt more and more acutely that she was in his eyes, if he could only see her, an interloper. No doubt it was Lucy's house too, but it didn't feel as if it were, and she would have given much to be able to escape back to London that night.