“Good-bye,” Florence said.
As Mrs. North was going out of the door she turned and asked, “Have you many friends—women friends?”
“Yes, a great many, thank you,” Mrs. Hibbert said, with a little haughty inclination of the head. The haughtiness seemed to amuse Mrs. North, for the merry look came over her face again, but only for a moment.
“I thought you had,” she answered. “I have none; I don’t want them. Good-bye.”
It was nearly dark, and the one servant left to help Florence get the house ready had neglected to light the lamp on the staircase. Mrs. North groped her way down.
“I want to tell you something,” she said. “You said just now that I was clever. I don’t think I am, but I can divine people’s thoughts pretty easily. You are very good, I think; but consider this, your goodness is of no use if you are not good to others; good to women especially. The good of goodness is that you can wrap others inside it. It ought to be like a big cloak that you have on a cold night, while the shivering person next to you has none. If you don’t make use of your goodness,” she went on with a catch in her breath, “what is the good of it?—I seem to be talking paradoxes—you prove how beautiful it is, perhaps, but that is all; you make it like the swan that sings its own death-song. One listens and watches, and goes away to think of things more comprehensible, and to do them. Good-bye, Mrs. Hibbert,” she said gently, and almost as if she were afraid she held out her hand. Florence took it, a little wonder-struck. “You are like a Madonna, very like one, as I said just now; but though you are older than I am, I think I know more about some things than you do—good and bad. Madonnas never know the world very well. Give my love to the old lady, and say I hope she has forgiven me. I am going to Monte Carlo the day after to-morrow, only for three days, to brace myself up for my husband’s return; tell her that too. It will shock her. Say that I should like to have taken her,” and with a last little laugh she went out—into the darkness, it seemed to Florence.
But the next minute there were two flashing lamps before the house; there was the banging of a door, and Mrs. North was driven away.
Florence went slowly back to the dining-room and the inventory. Ethel Dunlop had gone. She was glad of it, for she wanted to think over her strange visitor.
“I don’t understand her,” she said to herself. “She is unlike any one I ever met; she fascinated and repelled me. I felt as if I wanted to kiss her, and yet the touch of her hand made me shiver.” Then she thought of Madame Celestine’s bill, and of Aunt Anne, and wished that the dress had not been bought, especially for the dinner-party; it made her feel as if she had been the unwitting cause of Mrs. Baines’s extravagance. She looked into the fire, and remembered the events of that wonderful evening, and thought of Walter away, and the bills at home that would have to be paid at Christmas. And she thought of her winter cloak that was three years old and shabby, and of the things she had longed to buy for the children. Above all she thought of the visions she had had of saving little by little, and putting her savings away in a very safe place, until she had a cosy sum with which some day to give Walter a pleasant surprise, and suggest that they should go off together for “a little spree,” as he would call it, to Paris or Switzerland. The fire burnt low, the red coals grew dull, the light from the street lamp outside seemed to come searching into the room as though it were looking for some one who was not there. She thought of Walter’s letter safe in her pocket. He himself was probably at Malta by this time—getting stronger and stronger in the sunshine. Dear Walter, how generous he was; he too was a little bit reckless sometimes. She wondered if he inherited this last quality from Aunt Anne. She thought of her children at Witley having tea, most likely with cakes and jam in abundance; and of Aunt Anne in her glory. She wondered if Mr. Wimple had turned up. “Poor Aunt Anne,” she sighed, and there was a long bill in her mind. Presently she rose, lighted a candle, drew down the blind—shutting out the glare from the street lamp—and going slowly to the writing-table in the corner, unlocked it, opened a little secret drawer, and looked in. There were three five-pound notes there—the remainder of her mother’s gift. “I wonder if Mrs. North had Madame Celestine’s bill,” she thought. “But it doesn’t matter; she said it was fifteen pounds. I can send her the amount.”
A couple of hours later, while she was in the very act of putting a cheque into an envelope, a note arrived. It had been left by hand; it was scented with violets, and ran thus:—