It was past ten o’clock when she got back to Morton: ‘Has Angela Crossby rung up?’ she inquired of Puddle, who appeared to have been waiting in the hall.
‘No, she hasn’t!’ snapped Puddle, who was getting to the stage when she hated the mere name of Angela Crossby. Then she added: ‘You look like nothing on earth; in your place I’d go to bed at once, Stephen.’
‘You go to bed, Puddle, if you’re tired—where’s Mother?’
‘In her bath. For heaven’s sake do come to bed! I can’t bear to see you looking as you do these days.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘No, you’re not, you’re all wrong. Go and look at your face.’
‘I don’t very much want to, it doesn’t attract me,’ smiled Stephen.
So Puddle went angrily up to her room, leaving Stephen to sit with a book in the hall near the telephone bell, in case Angela should ring. And there, like the faithful creature she was, she must sit on all through the night, patiently waiting. But when the first tinges of dawn greyed the window and the panes of the semi-circular fanlight, she left her chair stiffly, to pace up and down, filled with a longing to be near this woman, if only to stand and keep watch in her garden—Snatching up a coat she went out to her car.
3
She left the motor at the gates of The Grange, and walked up the drive, taking care to tread softly. The air had an indefinable smell of dew and of very newly born morning. The tall, ornate Tudor chimneys of the house stood out gauntly against a brightening sky, and as Stephen crept into the small herb garden, one tentative bird had already begun singing—but his voice was still rather husky from sleep. She stood there and shivered in her heavy coat; the long night of vigil had devitalized her. She was sometimes like this now—she would shiver at the least provocation, the least sign of fatigue, for her splendid physical strength was giving, worn out by its own insistence.