"Do, dear," pleaded her aunt; "a nice long country ride by Finchley and Hendon would do you good."
"No, Aunt Di—I would rather be at home this morning," answered Christabel; so the man departed, with an order for the carriage at the usual hour in the afternoon.
There was a letter from Angus—Christabel only glanced at the opening lines, which told her that he was to stay at Hillside a few days longer, and then put the letter in her pocket. Jessie Bridgeman looked at her curiously—knowing very well that there was something sorely amiss—but waiting to be told what this sudden cloud of sorrow meant.
Christabel went back to her own room directly after breakfast. Her aunt forbore any attempt at consolation, knowing it was best to let the girl bear her grief in her own way.
"You will go with me for a drive after luncheon, dear?" she asked.
"Yes, Auntie—but I would rather we went a little way in the country, if you don't mind, instead of to the Park."
"With all my heart: I have had quite enough of the Park."
"The 'booing, and booing, and booing,'" said Jessie, "and the straining one's every nerve to see the Princess drive by—only to discover the humiliating fact that she is one of the very few respectable-looking women in the Park—perhaps the only one who can look absolutely respectable without being a dowdy."
"Shall I go to her room and try if I can be of any comfort to her?" mused Jessie, as she went up to her own snug little den on the third floor. "Better not, perhaps. I like to hug my sorrows. I should hate any one who thought their prattle could lessen my pain. She will bear hers best alone, I dare say. But what can it be? Not any quarrel with him. They could hardly quarrel by telegraph or post—they who are all honey when they are together. It is some scandal—something that old demon with the eyebrows said yesterday. I am sure of it—a talk between two elderly women with closed doors always means Satan's own mischief."
All three ladies went out in the carriage after luncheon—a dreary, dusty drive, towards Edgware—past everlasting bricks and mortar, as it seemed to Christabel's tired eyes, which gazed at the houses as if they had been phantoms, so little human meaning had they for her—so little did she realize that in each of those brick and plaster packing-cases human beings lived, and, in their turn, suffered some such heart-agony as this which she was enduring to-day.