“Yes.”
“What kind of picture?”
“It is a life-size portrait of a young cavalier with curls, in blue satin, holding his hat in his hand.”
“I knew it,” she groaned.
There was a long silence.
“I can’t bear it,” she said. “You may say that is silly, Beatrice, but all the same I can’t. My life will break in two. If Ted lives here—I shall have nowhere to go.”
“I don’t think it silly, dear, but I don’t understand This is your old home where you lived nearly three hundred years ago, and to which you have so often come back in your dreams. Now you are coming back to it as your home once more. It seems to me a beautiful and romantic thing to have happened, and after the first surprise surely it must seem the same to you. You have always been so happy here.”
“I can see a little now,” she said. “Where is the glass of water?”
She sat up and drank a little, and then dabbed some of the water on her forehead.
“I’m all right now,” she said, pushing back her wet hair.