you. Get up and rule your house.
I shall be gone and you won't have me to worry you, and in a few days
she'll be gone, too."

So she knew it, Esther realised, with a quickened heart. She slipped
back into her room and stood there silent until Madame Beattie, calling
Sophy to do some extra service for her, went away to her own room. And
still grandmother did not speak.

XXXIX

On the morning Madame Beattie went, a strange intermittent procession
trickled by the house, workmen, on their way to different activities,
diverted from their usual road, and halting an instant to salute the
windows with a mournful gaze. Some of them took their hats off, and the
few who happened to catch a glimpse of Madame Beattie gave eager
salutation. At one time a group of them had collected, and these Esther
looked down on with a calm face but rage in her heart, wondering why she
must be disgraced to the last. But when Madame Beattie really went there
was no one in the street, and Esther, a cloak about her, stood by the
carriage in a scrupulous courtesy, stamping a little, ostensibly to keep
her feet warm but more than half because she was in a fever of
impatience lest the unwelcome guest should be detained. Madame Beattie
was irritatingly slow. She arranged herself in the hack as if for a
drive long enough to demand every precaution. Esther knew perfectly well
she was being exasperating to the last, and in that she was right. But
she could hardly know Madame Beattie had not a malevolent impulse toward
her: only a careless understanding of her, an amused acceptance. When
she had tucked herself about with the robe, undoing Denny's kind offices
and doing them over with a tedious moderation, she put out her arms to
draw Esther into a belated embrace. But Esther could not bear
everything. She dodged it, and Madame Beattie, not at all rebuffed, gave
her hoarse little crow of laughter.

"Well," said she, "I leave you. But not for long, I daresay."

"You'll be coming back by spring," said Esther, willing to turn off the
encounter neatly.

"I might," said Madame Beattie, "if Susan dies and leaves me everything.
But I sha'n't depend on seeing you. We shall meet, of course, but it'll
be over there." Again she laughed a little at a disconcerted stare from
Esther. "Tell him to go along," she said. "You'd better make up your
mind to Italy. Everything seems right, there, even to New
Englanders--pretty nearly everything. _Au revoir_."

She