"Ah, dear me, it's fine to be you, Annabel! What changes since we last met. You a wife, and I a widow."
Mr. Greatorex took an impatient step forward, as if to speed her departure. She turned to him, speaking of her husband.
"I think Bede might have got well if he would. I used to tell him so. The doctors made an examination afterwards, and found, as you have heard, that there was no specific disease whatever. He wasted away; wasted and wasted; it was like as though there were a consuming fire ever within him burning him away to death."
"My goodness!" cried Roland. "Poor Bede."
"It was most unsatisfactory: I never saw anything like it in my life before," tartly retorted Mrs. Bede, for her husband's death had not pleased her, and she resented it openly. Not for the loss or love of him, but for the loss of his means. "I think he might have got well had he struggled for it. If you'll believe me, only the day before he died, he went out in a carriage to the post office, that he might post a letter himself to Sir Thomas Kene."
No one answered her, or made any comment.
"Is my old room ready for me?"
Mr. Greatorex, to whom the question was more particularly put, motioned her towards the door, and moved thither himself. "I wish to speak with you in private for a minute," he said. "Pardon me Sir Roland, I will be back directly."
That Mrs. Bede Greatorex had come to take the house by storm, hoping thereby to resume her late footing in it, Mr. Greatorex knew just as well as she. His letter to her, delivered by George Winter, was unmistakably plain; and he did wonder at the hardihood which had brought her hither, after its receipt.
"You cannot have misunderstood my communication," he said to her as they turned into the room that had once been her boudoir. "I must beg to refer you to it. This house can never shelter you again."