‘Very glad, I think.’
‘Did the loss of her child affect her deeply?’
‘I cannot say. She has never spoken of it.’
‘Poor child!’
Stella made no reply to the exclamation.
The next day Adela went to call on Mrs. Rodman. It was a house in Bayswater, not large, but richly furnished. Adela chose a morning hour, hoping to find her sister-in-law alone, but in this she was disappointed. Four visitors were in the drawing-room, three ladies and a man of horsey appearance, who talked loudly as he leaned back with his legs crossed, a walking-stick held over his knee, his hat on the ground before him. The ladies were all apparently middle-aged; one of them had a great quantity of astonishingly yellow hair, and the others made up for deficiency in that respect with toilets in very striking taste. The subject under discussion was a recent murder. The gentleman had the happiness of being personally acquainted with the murderer, at all events had frequently met him at certain resorts of the male population. When Mrs. Rodman had briefly welcomed Adela, the discussion continued. Its tone was vulgar, but perhaps not more so than the average tone among middle-class people who are on familiar terms with each other. The gentleman, still leading the conversation, kept his eyes fixed on Adela, greatly to her discomfort.
In less than half an hour these four took their departure.
‘So Dick came a cropper!’ was Alice’s first remark, when alone with her sister-in-law.
Adela tried in vain to understand.
‘At the election, you know. I don’t see what he wanted to go making himself so ridiculous. Is he much cut up?’