ame in at lunch-time there it was.
It would be too wonderful if when she went back at lunch-time she found
one there for her too. . .

Rose clasped her hands tight round her knees. How passionately
she longed to be important to somebody again--not important on
platforms, not important as an asset in an organization, but privately
important, just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to
know or notice. It didn't seem much to ask in a world so crowded with
people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions, to
oneself. Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to
come to one--oh, oh how dreadfully one wanted to be precious!

All the morning she sat beneath the pine-tree by the sea. Nobody
came near her. The great hours passed slowly; they seemed enormous.
But she wouldn't go up before lunch, she would give the telegram time
to arrive. . .

That day Scrap, egged on by Lotty's persuasions and also thinking
that perhaps she had sat long enough, had arisen from her chair and
cushions and gone off with Lotty and sandwiches up into the hills till
evening. Mr. Wilkins, who wished to go with them, stayed on Lady
Caroline's advice with Mrs. Fisher in order to cheer her solitude, and
though he left off cheering her about eleven to go and look for Mrs.
Arbuthnot, so as for a space to cheer her too, thus dividing himself
impartially between these solitary ladies, he came back again
presently mopping his forehead and continued with Mrs. Fisher where he
had left off, for this time Mrs. Arbuthnot had hidden successfully.
There was a telegram, too, for her he noticed when he came in. Pity he
did not know where she was.

"Ought we to open it?" he said to Mrs. Fisher.

"No," said Mrs. Fisher.

"It may require an answer."

"I don't approve of tampering with other people's
correspondence."

"Tampering! My dear lady--"

Mr. Wilkins was shocked. Such a word. Tampering. He had the
greatest possible esteem for Mrs. Fisher, but he did at times find her
a little difficult. She liked him, he was sure, and she was in a fair
way, he felt, to become a client, but he feared she would be a
headstrong and secretive client. She was certainly secretive, for
though he had been skilful and sympathetic for a whole week, she had as
yet given him no inkling of what was so evidently worrying her.

"Poor old thing," said Lotty, on his asking her if she perhaps
could throw light on Mrs. Fisher