“Oh, you wicked, witty thing! And original sin?”
“Yes, it is still rather prevalent.”
There was no queen’s progress through the Fernhill grounds for Mrs. Grigg Batsby that morning, for by ten o’clock her very existence had been forgotten, and she was left reading the Athenæum, and wondering, with hauteur, what had become of the treacherous “It.” Women like Mrs. Grigg Batsby have a way of exacting as a right what the average man would not presume to ask as a favour. That they should happen to notice anything is in itself a sufficient honour conferred upon the recipient, who becomes a debtor to them in service.
Canterton had drifted in search of Eve, had failed to find her, and was posing himself with various questions, when one of the under-gardeners brought him a letter. It had taken the man twenty minutes of hide and seek to trace Canterton’s restless wanderings.
“Just come from Orchards Corner, sir. The young lady brought it.”
“Miss Carfax?”
“No, sir, the young lady.”
“I see. All right, Gibbs.”
Canterton opened the letter, and stood reading it in the shade of a row of cypresses.
“Dear Mr. Canterton,—Mother died in the night. She must have died in her sleep. I always knew it might happen, but I never suspected that it would happen so suddenly. It has numbed me, and yet made me think.