When he had left she returned to the writing-table; she sorted and arranged a disordered heap of business letters, letters of condolence and tradesmen’s bills.  She pushed aside the letters of condolence—­Kitty would answer those.  She unlocked a drawer and took from it two open envelopes scored with many postmarks and addressed to Harmouth, to Cannes and to Harmouth again; these she scrutinized anxiously, as if they disclosed some secret guarded by their contents.  Then she read the letters carefully all over again.

One was from her cousin Edith Jewdwine.  Edith’s sympathy covered two sheets; it flowed from her pen, facile and fluent.  Edith had had the influenza, otherwise Edith would have come to Lucia at once.  Could not Lucia come to her instead?  Edith could not bear to think of Lucia alone there in her trouble, in that great big house.  She was glad that Kitty Palliser was with her.  If only she had not been so unfortunate as to catch influenza, and so on!

Lucia was sorry that Edith had influenza, but she was not sorry that she had not come.  She did not want Edith with her.

The other letter was from Horace.  Horace had refined his expressions of condolence into one faultless phrase.  The rest of his letter consisted of apologies and offers of service.  These his close cramped handwriting confined to the centre of the sheet, leaving a broad and decent margin to suggest the inexpressible.  He had heard of his uncle’s death indirectly; why had she not sent for him?  If she had wired to him at once he could have made arrangements to meet and take her to Cannes, or he could have joined her there and brought her home.  At present he was overwhelmed with business; but he hoped to run down to Harmouth at the end of the week, and travel up to town with her.  He understood that she was going to stay with Edith.  Busy as he was, he would come now, at any minute, if he could be of any immediate use.  She had only to wire if she wanted him.

She laid down that letter, pushed it aside, took it up again, and read it a second time, as if to satisfy herself as to the writer’s meaning.  She was not sure as to what Horace was or was not willing to do, but there could be no doubt that he was deeply sorry for her.  Why had she not sent for him?  Why indeed?  Her first instinct had been to send for him.  She had only to let him know that she was in trouble, and he would have come to her at any inconvenience to himself.  And that, of course, was why she had not sent.  It would have been so impossible for him to refuse.

And now she was thankful that she had spared him, and that he had not followed her to those terrible rooms in the Villa des Palmes, that he knew nothing of those seven days.  She would have endured any suffering, paid any price to obliterate the memory of them.  It was horrible to think how nearly Horace had been there.  Horace of all people—­the fastidious, the immaculate, the merciless.  If she had found it hard to judge her dead father tenderly, she knew what Horace’s judgement would have been.