Kitty Palliser was there; she rose to meet him with her irrepressible friendliness, undiminished by nine years.  There was nothing cold and business-like about Kitty.

“Will you tell Miss Harden?” said she to the detached, retreating Robert.  Then she held out her hand.  “I am very glad to see you.”  But a wave of compassion rather than of gladness swept over her face as she looked at him.  She made him sit down, and gave him tea.  There was a marked gentleness in all her movements, unlike the hilarious lady she used to be.

The minutes went by and Lucia did not appear.  He could not attend to what Kitty was saying.  His eyes were fixed on the door that looked as if it were never going to open.  Kitty seemed to bear tenderly with his abstraction.  Once he glanced round the room, recognizing familiar objects.  He had expected, after Dicky’s descent on Court House, to find nothing recognizable in it.  Kitty was telling him how an uncle of hers had lent them the house for a year, how he had bought it furnished, and how, but for the dismantled library and portrait gallery, it was pretty much as it had been in Miss Harden’s time.  So unchanged was it and its atmosphere that Rickman felt himself in the presence of a destiny no less unchanging and familiar.  He had come on business as he had done nine years ago; and he felt that the events of that time must in some way repeat themselves, that when he was alone with Lucia he would say to her such things as he had said before, that there would be differences, misunderstandings, as before, and that his second coming would end in misery and separation like the first.  It seemed to him that Kitty, kind Kitty, had the same perception and foreboding.  Thus he interpreted her very evident compassion.  She meant to console him.

“Robert remembers you,” said she.

“That’s very clever of Robert,” said he.

“No, it’s only his faithfulness.  What a funny thing faithfulness is.  Robert won’t allow any one but Miss Harden to be mistress here.  My people are interlopers, abominations of desolation.  He can barely be civil to their friends.  But to hers—­he is as you see him.  It’s a good thing for me I’m her friend, or he wouldn’t let me sit here and pour out tea for you.”

He thought over the speech.  It admitted an encouraging interpretation. 
But Miss Palliser may have been more consoling than she had meant.

She rattled on in the kindness of her heart.  He was grateful for her presence; it calmed his agitation and prepared him to meet Lucia with composure when she came.  But Lucia did not come; and he began to have a horrible fear that at the last moment she would fail him.  He refused the second cup that Kitty pressed on him, and she looked at him compassionately again.  He was so used to his appearance that he had forgotten how it might strike other people.  He was conscious only of Kitty’s efforts to fill up agreeably these moments of suspense.