"It's loneliness," suddenly said Miss Ronder, "that drives people to do the things they do."
Mrs. Bentinck-Major started as though some one had struck her in the small of her back. Was the woman a witch? How amazing!
"I beg your pardon," she said nervously.
"I was speaking," said Miss Ronder in her clear incisive voice, "of one of our maids, who has suddenly engaged herself to the most unpleasing-looking butcher's assistant you can imagine--all spots and stammer. Quite a pretty girl, too. But it's fear of loneliness that does it. Wanting affection."
Dear me! Mrs. Bentinck-Major had never had very much affection from Mr. Bentinck-Major, and had not very consciously missed it, but then she had a dog, a spaniel, whom she loved most dearly.
"We're all lonely--all of us--to the very end," said Miss Ronder, as though she was thinking of some one in especial. And she was. She was thinking of her nephew. "I shouldn't wonder if the Queen isn't feeling more lonely to-day than she has ever felt in all her life before."
And then they saw that dreadful man, Davray, lurching along. He was lonely, but then he deserved to be, with his drink and all. Wicked man! Mrs. Bentinck-Major shivered. She didn't know how he dared to go to church. He shouldn't be allowed. On such a day, too. What would the Queen herself think, did she know?
The two ladies and Davray passed through the door at the same time.
And now every one was inside. The great bell dropped notes like heavy weights into a liquid well. For the cup of the Cathedral swam in colour, the light pouring through the great Rose window, and that multitude of persons seeming to sway like shadows beneath a sheet of water from amber to purple, from purple to crimson, from crimson to darkest green.