"It will be better
if I go."
He scoffed at her. "Better! You are right." He rose in his place. "You'll
go to-day."
Sanchia regarded him deeply, almost curiously, as if he had been a plant,
interesting for its rarity.
"Naturally," she said, and left him in his staring fit.
The ordered little realm of Wanless went on its diurnal course. Luncheon
was served at two by a trembling parlour-maid; the coffee was set in the
hall, the cigar-box, the spirit-flame. Frodsham came for orders, Mr.
Menzies reported Glyde absent without leave. These things were done by
rote: yet the whole house knew the facts. Sanchia, dining in the middle of
the day, plied her knife and fork with composure. It was her way to face
facts once for all, tussle with them, gain or lose, and be done with them.
She had been angry with Glyde, but now could think of him as "poor
Struan," Punchinello in a rustic comedy. Of Ingram, deliberately, she
thought nothing. It had been necessary to survey her feelings of eight
years ago, to make a sour face of disgust over them, before she could
shake them out of her head. Now they were gone, and he with them: the
world, with May beginning, was too sweet a place for such vermin to fester
in.
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