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Page 94
It has been funny and delightful, that little interlude of
admiration, but of course it couldn't go on once Caroline appeared.
Rose knew her place. She could see as well as any one the unusually,
the unique loveliness of Lady Caroline. How warm, though, things like
admiration and appreciation made one feel, how capable of really
deserving them, how different, how glowing. They seemed to quicken
unsuspected faculties into life. She was sure she had been a
thoroughly amusing woman between lunch and tea, and a pretty one too.
She was quite certain she had been pretty; she saw it in Mr. Briggs's
eyes as clearly as in a looking-glass. For a brief space, she thought,
she had been like a torpid fly brought back to gay buzzing by the
lighting of a fire in a wintry room. She still buzzed, she still
tingled, just at the remembrance. What fun it had been, having an
admirer even for that little while. No wonder people liked admirers.
They seemed, in some strange way, to make one come alive.
Although it was all over she still glowed with it and felt more
exhilarated, more optimistic, more as Lotty probably constantly felt,
than she had done since she was a girl. She dressed with care, though
she knew Mr. Briggs would no longer see her, but it gave her pleasure
to see how pretty, while she was about it, she could make herself look;
and very nearly she stuck a crimson camellia in her hair down by her
ear. She did hold it there for a minute, and it looked almost sinfully
attractive and was exactly the colour of her mouth, but she took it out
again with a smile and a sigh and put it in the proper place for
flowers, which is water. She mustn't be silly, she thought. Think of
the poor. Soon she would be back with them again, and what would a
camellia behind her ear seem like then? Simply fantastic.
But on one thing she was determined: the first thing she would do
when she got home would be to have it out with Frederick. If he didn't
come to San Salvatore that is what she would do--the very first thing.
Long ago she ought to have done this, but always she had been
handicapped, when she tried to, by being so dreadfully fond of him and
so much afraid that fresh wounds were going to be given her wretched,
soft heart. But now let him wound her as much as he chose, as much as
he possibly could, she would still have it out with him. Not that he
ever intentionally wounded her; she knew he never meant to, she knew he
often had no idea of having done it. For a person who wrote books,
thought Rose, Frederick didn't seem to have much imagination. Anyhow,
she said to herself, getting up from the dressing-table, things
couldn't go on like this. She would have it out with him. This
separate life, this freezing loneliness, she had had enough of it. Why
shouldn't she too be happy? Why on earth--the energetic expression
matched her mood of rebelliousness--shouldn't she too be love and
allowed to love?
She looked at her little clock. Still ten minutes before dinner.
Tired of staying in her bedroom she thought she would go on to Mrs.
Fisher's battlements, which would be empty at this hour, and watch the
moon rise out of the sea.
She went into the deserted upper hall with this intention, but
was attracted on her way long it by the firelight shining through the
open door of the drawing-room.
How gay it looked. The fire transformed the room. A dark, ugly
room in the daytime, it was transformed just as she had been
transformed by the warmth of--no, she wouldn't be silly; she would
think of the poor; the thought of them always brought her down to
sobriety at once.
She peeped in. Firelight and flowers; and outside the deep slits
of windows hung the blue curtain of the night. How pretty. What a
sweet place San Salvatore was. And that gorgeous lilac on the table--
she must go and put her face in it . . .
But she never got to the lilac. She went one step towards it,
and then stood still, for she had seen the figure looking out of the
window in the farthest corner, and it was Frederick.
All the blood in Rose's body rushed to her heart and seemed to
stop its beating.
She stood quite still. He had not heard her. He did not turn
round. She stood looking at him. The miracle had happened, and he had
come.
She stood holding her breath. So he needed her, for he had come
instantly. So he too must have been thinking, longing . . .
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