"Aren't you feeling well, darling?" she asked gently.
"Quite well, Aunt Elsie, I promise," Kathleen said smiling, "but I said I would sit and talk to Mr. Asham this afternoon."
Mr. Asham was a blind man who had been ordered to take the waters at Saint-Yves. Kathleen had made friends with him.
"Very well," said Mrs. Knolles, with a sigh. "I must go. The motor will be there. Don't forget we've got people dining with us to-night, and don't wear your grey. It's too shabby." One of Miss Farrel's practices, which irritated her aunt, was to wear her shabbiest clothes on an occasion that called for dress, and to take pains, as it were, not to do herself justice.
Her aunt left her.
Kathleen had made no arrangement with Asham. She had invented the excuse on the spur of the moment, but she knew he would be in the park in the afternoon. She wanted to think. She wanted to be alone. If Lancelot had been in England when Sir James died, then he must have started home at least a fortnight ago, as the news that she had read was ten days old. She had not heard from him for over a month. This meant that his uncle had been ill, he had returned to London, and had experienced a change of fortune without writing her one word.
"All the same," she thought, "it proves nothing."
At that moment a friendly voice called to her.
"What are you doing all by yourself, Kathleen?"
It was her friend, Mrs. Roseleigh. Kathleen had known Eva Roseleigh all her life, although her friend was ten years older than herself and was married. She was staying at Saint-Yves by herself. Her husband was engrossed in other occupations and complications besides those of his business in the city, and of a different nature. Mrs. Roseleigh was one of those women whom her friends talked of with pity, saying "Poor Eva!" But "Poor Eva" had a large income, a comfortable house in Upper Brook Street. She was slight, and elegant; as graceful as a Tanagra figure, fair, delicate-looking, appealing and plaintive to look at, with sympathetic grey eyes. Her husband was a successful man of business, and some people said that the neglect he showed his wife and the publicity of his infidelities was not to be wondered at, considering the contempt with which she treated him. It was more a case of "Poor Charlie," they said, than "Poor Eva."