But for Gillian, left behind at Friars’ Holm, there remained nothing but an hourly sense of loss added to that crushing, inevitable flatness which succeeds a crisis of any kind.
Nor did a forlorn Coppertop’s reiterated inquiries as to how soon the Fairy Lady might be expected back again help to mend matters.
Lady Arabella’s grief was expressed in a characteristically prickly fashion.
“Young people don’t seem to know the first thing about love nowadays,” she observed with the customary scathing contempt of one age for another.
In my young days! Ah! there will never be times like those again! We are all quite sure of it as our young days recede into the misty past.
“If you loved, you loved,” pursued Lady Arabella crisply. “And the death of half a dozen sisters wouldn’t have been allowed to interfere with the proceedings.”
Gillian smiled a little.
“It wasn’t only that. It was Michael’s bitter disappointment in Magda, I think, quite as much as the fact that, indirectly, he held her responsible for June’s death.”
“It’s ridiculous to try and foist Mrs. Storran’s death on to Magda,” fumed Lady Arabella restively. “If she hadn’t the physical health to have a good, hearty baby successfully, she shouldn’t have attempted it. That’s all! . . . And then those two idiots—Magda and Michael! Of course he must needs shoot off abroad, and equally of course she must be out of the way in a sisterhood when he comes rushing back—as he will do!”—with a grim smile.
“He hasn’t done yet,” Gillian pointed out.