t
been pinching her, as Selina described the pressure, but had clung to
her with insistent hands. As she opened the door Selina said, in a
changed voice: 'I suppose it's no use to ask you if you care to drive to
Plash.'

'No, thank you, I don't care--I shall take a walk.'

'I suppose, from that, that your friend Lady Davenant has gone.'

'No, I think she is still there.'

'That's a bore!' Selina exclaimed, as she went off.

VI

Laura Wing hastened to her room to prepare herself for her walk; but
when she reached it she simply fell on her knees, shuddering, beside her
bed. She buried her face in the soft counterpane of wadded silk; she
remained there a long time, with a kind of aversion to lifting it again
to the day. It burned with horror and there was coolness in the smooth
glaze of the silk. It seemed to her that she had been concerned in a
hideous transaction, and her uppermost feeling was, strangely enough,
that she was ashamed--not of her sister but of herself. She did not
believe her--that was at the bottom of everything, and she had made her
lie, she had brought out her perjury, she had associated it with the
sacred images of the dead. She took no walk, she remained in her room,
and quite late, towards six o'clock, she heard on the gravel, outside of
her windows, the wheels of the carriage bringing back Mrs. Berrington.
She had evidently been elsewhere as well as to Plash; no doubt she had
been to the vicarage--she was capable even of that. She could pay
'duty-visits,' like that (she called at the vicarage about three times a
year), and she could go and be nice to her mother-in-law with her fresh
lips still fresher for the lie she had just told. For it was as definite
as an aching nerve to Laura that she did not believe her, and if she did
not believe her the words she had spoken were a lie. It was the lie, the
lie to _her_ and which she had dragged out of her that seemed to the
girl the ugliest thing. If she had admitted her folly, if she had
explained, attenuated, sophisticated, there would have been a difference
in her favour; but now she was bad because she was hard. She had a
surface of polished metal. And she could make plans and calculate, she
could act and do things for a particular effect. She could go straight
to old Mrs. Berrington and to the parson's wife and his many daughters
(just as she had kept the children after luncheon, on purpose, so long)
because that looked innocent and domes