“Damaris, are you there?  Ah! yes.  Darling child.  At last!”

During that reconnoitering she inventoried impressions of the room and its contents.—­Cool, first—­blue walls, blue carpet, blue upholstering of sofa and of chairs.  Not worn or shabby, but so graciously faded by sun and air, that this—­decoratively speaking—­most perilous of colours became innocuous, in a way studious, in keeping with a large writing-table occupying the centre of the picture, laden with manuscripts and with books.  The wooden outside shutters of two of the three windows were closed, which enhanced the prevailing coolness and studiousness of effect.  Red cushions, also agreeably faded, upon the window-seats, alone echoed, in some degree, the hot radiance obtaining out of doors—­these, and a red enamelled vase holding sprays of yellow and orange-copper roses, placed upon a smaller table before which Damaris sat, her back towards the invader.

At the sound of the latter’s voice, the girl started, raised her head and, in the act of looking round, swept together some scattered sheets of note-paper and shut her blotting-book.

“Henrietta!” she cried, and thereupon sprang up; the lady, meanwhile, advancing towards her with outstretched arms, which enclosed her in a fragrant embrace.

“Yes—­nothing less than Henrietta”—­imprinting light kisses on either cheek.  “But I see you are busy writing letters, dearest child.  I am in the way—­I interrupt you?”

And, as Damaris hastily denied that such was the case: 

“Ah! but I do,” she repeated.  “I have no right to dart in on you thus a l’improviste.  It is hardly treating such an impressive young person—­absolutely I believe you have grown since I saw you last!—­yes, you are taller, darling child—­handsomer than ever, and a tiny bit alarming too—­what have you been doing with, or to, or by yourself?—­Treating her—­the impressive young person, I mean—­with proper respect.  But it was such a chance.  I learnt that you were alone”—­A fib, alas! on Henrietta’s part.—­“And I couldn’t resist coming.  I so longed to have you, like this, all to myself.  What an eternity since we met!—­For me a wearing, ageing eternity.  The duties of a sick-room are so horribly anxious, yet so deadening in their repetition of ignoble details.  I could not go through with them, honestly I could not—­though I realize it is a damning admission for a woman to make—­if it wasn’t that I am rather absurdly attached to what good Dr. Stewart-Walker persists in calling ‘our patient.’  Is not that enough in itself?—­To fall from all normal titles and dignities and become merely a patient?  No, joking apart, only affection makes nursing in any degree endurable to me.  Without its saving grace the whole business would be too unpardonably sordid.”

She pursed up her lips, and shivered her graceful shoulders with the neatest exposition of delicate distaste.

“And too gross.  But one must face and accept the pathetic risk of being eventually converted in garde malade thus, if one chooses to marry a man considerably older than oneself.  It is a mistake.  I say so though I committed it with my eyes open.  I was betrayed by my affection.”