She had gone out to tea with him in a flat on the day her father’s sudden death had been announced in the papers. And yet she had pretended that she was hovering on the verge of love for Alick Craven. She had even implied that she was thinking of marrying him. Lady Sellingworth saw Beryl as a treacherous lover, as well as an unkind friend and a heartless daughter, and suddenly her anger against Craven died in pity. She had believed for a little while that she hated him, but now she longed to protect him from pain, to comfort him, to make him happy, as surely she had once made him happy, if only for an hour or two. She forgot her pride and her sense of injury in a sudden rush of feeling that was new to her, that perhaps, really, had something of motherliness in it. And she sat down quickly and wrote an acceptance to Mrs. Ackroyde.
When Sunday came she felt excited and eager, absurdly so for a woman of sixty. But her secret diffidence troubled her. She looked into her mirror and thought of the piercing eyes of the “old guard,” of those merciless and horribly intelligent women who had marked with amazement her sudden collapse into old age ten years ago, who would mark with a perhaps even greater amazement this bizarre attempt at a partial return towards what she had once been.
And what would Alick Craven think?
Nevertheless she put a little more red on her lips, called her maid, had something done to her hair.
“It has been a great success!” said the little Frenchwoman. “Miladi looks wonderful to-day. Black and white is much better than unrelieved black for miladi. And the soupcon of blue on the hat and in the earrings of miladi lights up the whole personality. Miladi never did a wiser thing than when she visited Switzerland.”
“You think not, Cecile?”
“Indeed yes, miladi. There is no specialist even in Paris like Monsieur Paulus. And as to the Doctor Lavallois, he is a marvel. Every woman who is no longer a girl should go to him.”
Lady Sellingworth picked up a big muff and went down to the motor, leaving Cecile smiling behind her. As she disappeared down the stairs Cecile, who was on the bright side of thirty, with a smooth, clear skin and chestnut-coloured hair, pushed out her under-lip slowly and shook her head.
“La vieillesse!” she murmured. “La vieillesse amoureuse! Quelle horreur!”
Lady Sellingworth had never given the maid any confidence about her secret reasons for doing this or that. But Cecile was a Parisian. She fully understood the reason for their visit to Geneva. Miladi had fallen in love.