“You mustn’t cry, Chatty; you must be brave. Your little girl and his—how could you think? But you must give me time:{55} I must manage it in my own way.... Only trust me....”

{55}

Charlotte’s lips stirred faintly.

“The tears ... don’t dry them, Delia.... I like to feel them....”

The two cousins continued to lean against each other without speaking. The ormolu clock ticked out the measure of their mute communion in minutes, quarters, a half-hour, then an hour: the day declined and darkened, the shadows lengthened across the garlands of the Axminster and the broad white bed. There was a knock.

“The children’s waiting to say their grace before supper, ma’am.”

“Yes, Eliza. Let them say it to you. I’ll come later.” As the nurse’s steps receded Charlotte Lovell disengaged herself from Delia’s embrace.

“Now I can go,” she said.{56}

{56}

“You’re not too weak, dear? I can send for a coach to take you home.”

“No, no; it would frighten mother. And I shall like walking now, in the darkness. Sometimes the world used to seem all one awful glare to me. There were days when I thought the sun would never set. And then there was the moon at night.” She laid her hands on her cousin’s shoulders. “Now it’s different. By and bye I shan’t hate the light.”

The two women kissed each other, and Delia whispered: “Tomorrow.{57}”

{57}

IV

THE Ralstons gave up old customs reluctantly, but once they had adopted a new one they found it impossible to understand why everyone else did not immediately do likewise.

T

When Delia, who came of the laxer Lovells, and was naturally inclined to novelty, had first proposed to her husband to dine at six o’clock instead of two, his malleable young face had become as relentless as that of the old original Ralston in his grim Colonial portrait. But after a two days’ resistance he had come round to his wife’s view, and now smiled contemptuously at the obstinacy of those{58} who clung to a heavy 

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