“Oh, no, I don’t think she was; she was evidently going to the post-box, but her gown—’Pon my word, she looked like a dressed-up figure in a carnival.”
“Oh, she is quite mad,” said the little wife; “they say she’s very nice, but quite mad.”
Meanwhile, Regina, all unconscious of the strictures which had been passed upon her appearance, had gone back into Ye Dene, and lingered in the covered way adjusting a plant here and a leaf there, as if she had no higher object in life than the arrangement of her house. It happened that Alfred woke up as his wife gently closed the door behind her.
“I thought Queenie was here. Dear me, it is quite chilly—what a fool I was to go to sleep here! I suppose it’s a sign of old age.”
Then he stretched out one arm and then the other one.
“I suppose I ought to write that letter to Jenkinson,” was his next thought. So he heaved himself up out of his comfortable chair, picked up the art magazine, and sought his own little sanctum, which was behind the dining-room. There he wrote a letter of three lines making an appointment for the next morning, and then he too set off for the pillar-box.
“Hullo! Queenie, are you here?” he exclaimed, as he saw the tall figure in the voluminous white draperies. “Walk up as far as the post with me.”
“Oh, are you going to the post?” she said. “I have just been. Yes, I will come with you, certainly.”