“Good-bye,” echoed her husband, enclosing Anne’s frail hand in his vigorous clasp. “Don’t let Sylvia bother you with too many letters. I am convinced that I’ve done the right thing by the child in sticking to my own ideas.”
He smiled the manly smile of self-confidence and wisdom denied to women, and Miss Page, following her visitors to the hall-door, waved to them as they went down the drive together.
The amusement that she need no longer repress, was in her eyes, as she went upstairs to her room; the gentle tolerant amusement of a woman old enough to look at life with kindly sympathy for its absurdities, and that charity without which the spectacle has a tendency to move to a mirth as bitter and more cruel than anger.
She found Burks on her knees before a trunk, still engaged in packing.
“That will do, Burks. I’ll finish it myself,” she said. “You go down and get your tea.”
After the maid had left, Anne opened the door which led from her bedroom into her sitting-room, and examined the shelves with the idea of choosing one or two favourite books to take with her on her journey.
The books in this room were chiefly modern, supplementing the library downstairs.
She chose one or two French novels, and a little volume of Herrick, which had found its way to the shelves mostly devoted to French literature. Then she returned to the bedroom, which was already bright with lamp and firelight.
She hesitated a moment, then went to the bureau, from which several months before she had taken her old journal.