“Unpack all those things, and put them tidy,” she said. “I haven’t time to scold you now, but I’ll come back and do it thoroughly this afternoon.”
The girl’s look of relief touched her, but she could scarcely repress a smile as she turned at the door, to see her standing like a penitent baby amongst all her finery.
“I wonder what I should have done with daughters?” she asked herself, half humorously, as she stepped into a cab, outside.
The question was answered by a smile and a sigh that were almost simultaneous.
Anne spent a busy morning. She went first to her solicitor, and after an hour’s colloquy with him on the case of Sylvia Carfax, she drove on to her brother’s house in Kensington. It stood in a highly respectable square, and was one of the hundreds of dull substantial edifices which came into existence during the mid-Victorian era.
Anne rang the bell, and stood waiting rather excitedly under the stucco canopy supported by pillars.
Her present meeting with Hugh was divided from the last, by a period of twenty years. It was odd to remember how little she knew of this brother, her only near relative in the world. He would be much changed, of course.
A sudden vivid recollection of the last time she had met him, swept through her mind, as she stood waiting admittance. How desolate she had been. How shy. How filled with the sense of being an outsider, a forgotten guest, unbidden to the banquet of life!
The door opened, and it was Hugh himself who drew her over the threshold, and welcomed her in the loud, kind voice she remembered.
“We’ve been waiting for you all the morning,” he declared, “and I rushed down when I heard the bell. Come in and let me look at you! It’s impossible to see anything in this wretched foggy atmosphere.”