She scarcely recognized Madge Dakin.
Her cheeks were white and sunken, and swollen with much crying. She was pitifully thin, and her nervous hands strayed constantly about her face. Her pretty hair, generally so carefully waved and tended, was screwed into an untidy knot at the back of her head. She had evidently not troubled to dress all day, for she wore a bedroom wrapper, whose pink ribbons she had forgotten to tie and arrange.
“My dear child,” declared Anne, “you must give me some tea. I’m dying for it, and I shall be speechless till I get it.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I make it myself generally. I—forgot it this afternoon.”
Anne sat down in an armchair near the fire, and purposely allowed her to put on the kettle, and make all the preparations alone.
A glance at the room, a fairly large one, from which a bedroom opened, showed that her friend had probably done nothing but cry over the fire for several days.
It was dusty, and littered with papers, books, working materials. It looked untidy, and uncared for.
There were dead flowers in the vases, and the curtains half drawn, obscured the already dying light of a dull day.
When the kettle began to boil, she rose, and gently pushed Madge into a chair.
She made the tea herself, while in a sort of stupor of wretchedness, Mrs. Dakin watched the movements of her white fingers.