Caroline was married, and with a decent tear had left for a month’s
sweet lunacy under blue skies and on Mediterranean terraces. I had
bestowed an appropriate valediction at Victoria Station to the
accompanying exhalation of steam, the slamming of doors, and the waving
of a green flag, and had returned to my flat.
It had not appeared quite the same to me. I had peeped into the little
room that had been so long her own, and a sense of emptiness and
unfamiliarity had struck me, leaving little desire to make friends with
it. My own rooms were structurally unchanged; but a corded and labelled
trunk, left to be called for after the bridal trip, seemed to occupy the
whole place to my utter exclusion, and unsettled me greatly. I perceived
that virtue had gone out from these lifeless shells of apartments; and
my feline attachment to the building itself was not sufficiently strong
to reconcile me to an immediate resumption of the old order of things.
On the whole, I did not waste much sentiment over the matter, but spoke
a word in Mrs. Loring’s ear, received an invitation from some friends of
hers in the country, left my chairs in canvas and my blinds in full
mourning, and made haste to lawns and trim, clipped hedges till I should
summon resolution to face the fresh conditions.
This gave Mrs. Loring, a certain opportunity which, as I had foreseen,
she was little likely to waive, and which also suited my mood admirably.
Overhead the rooks were holding their sage, sustained conference, and I,
I believe, nodding gravely and judicially, when an undefined sense of
intruding mortals caused me to blink through my lashes. Mrs. Loring and
Millicent were slowly crossing the lawn in my direction, their white
gowns dipping from orange to grey and grey to orange as they traversed
the belts of light. Mrs. Loring was talking; this, be it said, was Mrs.
Loring’s supreme opportunity.