The Sutcliffes were going. They were trying to let Greffington Hall. The agent, Mr. Oldshaw, had told Mr. Horn. Mr. Frank, the Major, would be back from India in April. He was going to be married. He would live in the London house and Mr. and Mrs. Sutcliffe would live abroad.
Mamma said, "If their son's coming back they've chosen a queer time to go away."
XIV.
It couldn't be true.
You knew it when you dined with them, when you saw the tranquil Regency faces looking at you from above the long row of Sheraton chairs, the pretty Gainsborough lady smiling from her place above the sideboard.
As you sat drinking coffee out of the dark blue coffee cups with gold linings you knew it couldn't be true. You were reassured by the pattern of the chintzes—pink roses and green leaves on a pearl-grey ground—by the crystal chains and pendants of the chandelier, by the round black mirror sunk deep in the bowl of its gilt frame.
They couldn't go; for if they went, the quiet, gentle life of these things would be gone. The room had no soul apart from the two utterly beloved figures that sat there, each in its own chintz-covered chair.
"It isn't true," she said, "that you're going?"
She was sitting on the polar bear hearthrug at Mrs. Sutcliffe's feet.
"Yes, Mary."