Ellen must not stand there, or she was bound to hate her.  It was intolerable that this girl who was going to be Richard’s wife should intrude into the sacred places of the woman who had to be content with being his mother.  “Ellen, Ellen!” she shouted, and waved her stick.  The girl clambered down and came towards her with steps that became slower as she came nearer.  She was, Marion saw, looking at her again under faintly contracted brows, and she realised that because she wept about the child at Coltsfoot her eyes were small and red, and that had added to her face a last touch of ruin which made it an unfavourable place for the struggles of an unspontaneous expression of amiability.  Of course the girl was alarmed at being called down from her serene thoughts of Richard by grotesque wavings of a woman whose face was such a queer mask.  But there was nothing to be said that would explain it all.  She took refuge in silence; and knew as they walked home that that also was sinister.

CHAPTER IV

It struck Marion that it was very beautiful in this room that night.  The white walls were bloomed with shadows and reflections, and the curtains of gold and orange Florentine brocade were only partly drawn, so that at each window there showed between them an oblong of that mysterious blue which the night assumes to those who look on it from lit rooms.  On the gleaming table, under the dim light of a shaded lacquer lamp, dark roses in a bowl had the air of brooding and passionate captives.  Different from these soft richnesses as silk is from velvet, the clear flame of the wood fire danced again in the glass doors of one of the bookcases:  and at the other, choosing a book in which to read herself to sleep, stood Ellen, her head a burning bush of beauty, her body exquisitely at odds with the constrictions of the product of the Liberton dressmaker.  She held a volume in one hand and rested the other on her hip, so that there was visible the red patch on her elbow that bespeaks the recent schoolgirl, and all that could be seen of her face was her nose, which seemed to be refusing to be overawed by the reputation of the author whose work she studied.  In the swinging glass door beside her there was a diffusion of reflected hues that made Marion able to imagine what she herself looked like, in her gown of copper-coloured velvet, sitting in the high-backed chair by the fire.  She was glad that sometimes, by night, her beauty crawled out of the pit age had dug for it, and, orienting her thoughts as she always did, she rejoiced that Richard would find such an interior on his return.

“Have you found a book you like?”

“No.  There’s lots of lovely ones.  But none I just fancy.  I’m inclined to be disagreeable and far too particular this evening.  Are these your books or Richard’s?”

“Nearly all mine.”

“You must be intellectual then.  Now mother was different.  No one could have called her an intellectual, though she could always take a point if you put it to her.  Do you know, you’re not like an elderly pairson at all.  Usually one thinks of a lady of your age as just a buddy in a bonnet.  But you’ve got such an active mind, not like a young pairson’s.  I’ll take Froude’s ‘Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle.’  That ought to do.”