But how she wished, oh how Rose wished, that she too could write to her husband and say “Come.”  The Wilkins menage, however pompous Mellersh might be, and he had seemed to Rose pompous, was on a healthier, more natural footing than hers.  Lotty could write to Mellersh and would get an answer.  She couldn’t write to Frederick, for only too well did she know he wouldn’t answer.  At least, he might answer—­a hurried scribble, showing how much bored he was at doing it, with perfunctory thanks for her letter.  But that would be worse than no answer at all; for his handwriting, her name on an envelope addressed by him, stabbed her heart.  Too acutely did it bring back the letters of their beginnings together, the letters from him so desolate with separation, so aching with love and longing.  To see apparently one of these very same letters arrive, and open it to find: 

Dear Rose—­Thanks for letter.  Glad you’re having a good time.  Don’t hurry back.  Say if you want any money.  Everything going splendidly here—­
       Yours, Frederick.

—­no, it couldn’t be borne.

“I don’t think I’ll come down to the village with you to-day,” she said, looking up at Lotty with eyes suddenly gone dim.  “I think I want to think.”

“All right,” said Lotty, at once starting off briskly down the path.  “But don’t think too long,” she called back over her shoulder.  “Write and invite him at once.”

“Invite whom?” asked Rose, startled.

“Your husband.”

Chapter 12

At the evening meal, which was the first time the whole four sat round the dining-room table together, Scrap appeared.

She appeared quite punctually, and in one of those wrappers or tea-gowns which are sometimes described as ravishing.  This one really was ravishing.  It certainly ravished Mrs. Wilkins, who could not take her eyes off the enchanting figure opposite.  It was a shell-pink garment, and clung to the adorable Scrap as though it, too, loved her.

“What a beautiful dress!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkins eagerly.

“What—­this old rag?” said Scrap, glancing down at it as if to see which one she had got on.  “I’ve had it a hundred years.”  And she concentrated on her soup.

“You must be very cold in it,” said Mrs. Fisher, thin-lipped; for it showed a great deal of Scrap—­the whole of her arms, for instance, and even where it covered her up it was so thin that you still saw her.

“Who—­me?” said Scrap, looking up a moment.  “Oh, no.”

And she continued her soup.

“You mustn’t catch a chill, you know,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, feeling that such loveliness must at all costs be preserved unharmed.  “There’s a great difference here when the sun goes down.”

“I’m quite warm,” said Scrap, industriously eating her soup.

“You look as if you had nothing at all on underneath,” said Mrs. Fisher.