o wait
there for an early cab to come by.
Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his age from
the house which he had called his own.
When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the house, her
first feeling was one of dull anger that he should thus elude the
reproaches she had carefully prepared in those long wakeful hours. He
had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton, with that woman as likely as not.
Disgusting! Forced to a complete reticence before Imogen and the
servants, and aware that her father's nerves would never stand the
disclosure, she had been unable to refrain from going to Timothy's that
afternoon, and pouring out the story of the pearls to Aunts Juley and
Hester in utter confidence. It was only on the following morning that
she noticed the disappearance of that photograph. What did it mean?
Careful examination of her husband's relics prompted the thought that he
had gone for good. As that conclusion hardened she stood quite still in
the middle of his dressing-room, with all the drawers pulled out, to try
and realise what she was feeling. By no means easy! Though he was 'the
limit' he was yet her property, and for the life of her she could not but
feel the poorer. To be widowed yet not widowed at forty-two; with four
children; made conspicuous, an object of commiseration! Gone to the arms
of a Spanish Jade! Memories, feelings, which she had thought quite dead,
revived within her, painful, sullen, tenacious. Mechanically she closed
drawer after drawer, went to her bed, lay on it, and buried her face in
the pillows. She did not cry. What was the use of that? When she got
off her bed to go down to lunch she felt as if only one thing could do
her good, and that was to have Val home. He--her eldest boy--who was to
go to Oxford next month at James' expense, was at Littlehampton taking
his final gallops with his trainer for Smalls, as he would have phrased
it following his father's diction. She caused a telegram to be sent to
him.
"I must see about his clothes," she said to Imogen; "I can't have him
going up to Oxford all anyhow. Those boys are so particular."
"Val's got heaps of things," Imogen answered.
"I know; but they want overhauling. I hope he'll come."
"He'll come like a shot, Mother. But he'll probably skew his Exam."
"I can't help that," said Winifred. "I want him."
With an innocent shrewd look at her mother's face, Imogen kept silence.
It
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