ride rough-shod over the whole world, and often do it under the pretence of kindness.  It was most cunning the way she rang for the cook to try and make it seem that there was a pressing domestic reason for her taking this jaunt.  But cook had let her down badly, staring in such ingenuous amazement, and blurting out:  “Oh Lor’, mum, I don’t want no aluminium set now.  All I said was I thought our copper saucepans would need re-coppering in a year or so, and that, considering the trouble and expense that meant, we might as well restock with aluminium.”  There had been a hysterical stridency about the way in which Marion had flouted the woman’s protests by repeating over and over again:  “Yes, you shall have them now.  There’s not the smallest reason why you should wait for them.  I shall go up to Harrod’s to-morrow morning.”

Indeed, Marion was a queer woman in all respects, from her broad face and squat body to her forced, timbreless voice and her unconvincing gestures.  It was only her clumsiness that had prevented her from opening the French window; the lock was all right.  Ellen felt that she would die if she did not have an hour alone with Richard to relearn that life could be lived easily and with grace.  But it would be just like the creature’s untimeliness and awkwardness to be still hanging about the garden in readiness and pop in just when everything was being lovely.  Ellen crossed to one of the small leaded windows which were on each side of the French window and looked out of the open pane in its centre.  It was as she feared.  The light streaming from the room showed her Marion standing half-way across the lawn, looking up at the top storey of the house.  As the ray found her she lowered her head and made a jerky, embarrassed movement in the direction of Ellen, who, feeling merciless, continued to hold back the curtain.  Marion drew her cloak collar up about her ears and stepped aside into the darkness.  Ellen went and sat down by the fire.  From something in Marion’s bearing, she knew that she would not be back for some time.

It would be beautiful when Richard came down to her.  Now that the room was purged of its late occupant she felt herself becoming again the miracle that Richard’s love had made her in the days before they left Edinburgh.  Her heart beat quicker, she was sustained by a general mirth and needed no particular joke to make her smile.  She felt the equal of the tall flame that was driving through the fire.  It did not worry her that Richard was not with her, for she knew that at each moment she was recovering more and more of that joy in life which had previously come to her every morning, though those were greyer than here:  which had been a real possession, since Richard had often, when he was tired, found such restoration in reading its signs on her as a footsore man might find in throwing himself in long grass:  which had been gradually going from her ever since the house had begun to draw her into its affairs.  Now she was regaining it; though, indeed, ever to have become conscious of it, as she had during the time of being without it, was to have lost the glad essence of it.  She quailed and rejoiced like a convalescent who sets out to put his strength to the test, when she heard the slamming of a door overhead.