The Crow stayed on after all the other guests had left. He knew his
hostess wished to talk to him.
It had begun to pour with rain, and the dripping streets held out no
inducement to them to go out.
They pulled up their two comfortable arm-chairs to the sparkling wood
fire, and then Colonel Lowerby said:
"You look sad, Queen Anne. Tell me about it."
"Yes, I am sad," said Anne. "The position is so hopeless. Hector loves
her--loves her really--and I do not wonder at it; and she seems just
everything that one could wish for him. A thousand times above Morella
in intellect and understanding. All the things Hector and I like she
sees at once. No need of explaining to her, as one has to to mother and
Morella always."
"Yes," said the Crow. He did not argue with her as usual.
"It seems so fearful to think of her forever bound to that dreadful old
grocer, whom she treats with so much deference and gentleness. The whole
thing has made me sad. Hector is perfectly miserable; and, do you know,
they are going to Beechleigh for Whitsuntide. Sir Patrick Fitzgerald is
her uncle--and, of course, Hector is going, too, and--"
She did not finish her sentence. Her voice died away in a pathetic note
as she gazed into the fire.
The Crow fidgeted; he had been devoted to Anne since she was a child of
ten, and he hated to see her troubled.
"Look here," he said. "I investigated her thoroughly at luncheon, and I
don't often make a mistake, do I?"
"No," said Anne. "Well--?"
"Well, she appeared to me to have some particular quality of
sweetness--you were right about her looking like an angel--and I think
she has got an angel's nature more or less; and when people are really
like that there is some one up above looks after them, and I don't think
we need worry much--you and I."
"Dear old Crow!" said Anne; "you do comfort me. But all the same, angel
or not, Hector is so attractive--and he is a man, you know, not one of
these anæmic, artistic, æsthetic things we see about so often now; and
thrown together like that--how on earth will they be able to help
themselves?"
The Crow was silent.
"You see," she continued, "beyond Morella, who is too absolutely
unalluring and respectable to come to harm anywhere, and Miss Linwood,
who only cares for bridge, there will hardly be another woman in the
house who has not got a lover, and the atmosphere of those things is
catching--don't you think so?"
"It is nature," said Colonel Lowerby. "A woman in possession of her
health and faculties requires a mate, and when her husband is attending
to sport or some other man's wife, she is bound to find one somewhere. I
don't blame the poor things."
"Oh, nor I!" said Anne. "I don't ever blame any one. And just one,
because you love him, seems all right, perhaps. It is six different ones
in a year, and a seventh to pay the bills, that I find vulgar."
"Dans les premières passions, les femmes aiment l'amant; et dans les
autres, elles aiment l'amour," quoted the Crow. "It was ever the same,
you see. It is the seventh to pay the bills that seems vulgar and
modern."
"Billy and I stayed there for the pheasant shoot last November, and I
assure you we felt quite out of it, having no little adventures at night
like the rest. Lady Ada is the picture of washed-out respectability
herself, and so--to give her some reflected color, I suppose--she asks
always the most go-ahead, advanced section of her acquaintances."
"Well, I shall be there this time," said the Crow; "she invited me last
week."
This piece of news comforted Lady Anningford greatly. She felt here
would be some one to help matters if he could.
"Morella will be perfectly furious when she gets there and finds she was
not the reason of Hector's empressement for the invitation. And in her
stolid way she can be just as spiteful as Lady Harrowfield."
"Yes, I know."
Then they were both silent for a while--Anne's thoughts busy with the
mournful idea of the end of the House of Bracondale should Hector never
marry, and the Crow's of her in sympathy, his eyes watching her face.
At last she spoke.
"I believe it would be best for Hector to go right away for a year or
so," she sighed. "But, however it may be, I fear, alas! it can only end
in tears."