“And that’s why I don’t like all these things, Mr. Butterfield. What would you do?”
Mrs. Carmichael was signalling for me across the room. I rose and took Aggie’s hand.
“My dear,” I replied, “you have a truer instinct in these things than I. Whatever you do will be right, I know; and a fat, blundering man would spoil it. We sit together at breakfast to-morrow. I’m very glad.”
And, in response to Mrs. Carmichael’s imperious summons, I left her and plunged again into the general bewilderment.
Shortly afterwards I heard Mrs. Vicars’s voice.
“Oh, look, Caroline, what a sweet handkerchief case Agnes there has given you!”
XV
SETTLING DAY
Caroline was married, and with a decent tear had left for a month’s sweet lunacy under blue skies and on Mediterranean terraces. I had bestowed an appropriate valediction at Victoria Station to the accompanying exhalation of steam, the slamming of doors, and the waving of a green flag, and had returned to my flat.
It had not appeared quite the same to me. I had peeped into the little room that had been so long her own, and a sense of emptiness and unfamiliarity had struck me, leaving little desire to make friends with it. My own rooms were structurally unchanged; but a corded and labelled trunk, left to be called for after the bridal trip, seemed to occupy the whole place to my utter exclusion, and unsettled me greatly. I perceived that virtue had gone out from these lifeless shells of apartments; and my feline attachment to the building itself was not sufficiently strong to reconcile me to an immediate resumption of the old order of things. On the whole, I did not waste much sentiment over the matter, but spoke a word in Mrs. Loring’s ear, received an invitation from some friends of hers in the country, left my chairs in canvas and my blinds in full mourning, and made haste to lawns and trim, clipped hedges till I should summon resolution to face the fresh conditions.
This gave Mrs. Loring, a certain opportunity which, as I had foreseen, she was little likely to waive, and which also suited my mood admirably.