“Where is your aunt?” said Sabine, her word for her daughter and her tone of criticism directing the question to her grandchildren.
“We do not know,” said Clare. “It appears we are all in the same position.”
“Do not use silly phrases, girl.”
“She is not in her room,” said Victor. “Her door was open when I passed.”
“Then will you offer to go and find her? You must know that her breakfast will be cold. You are all sitting there, eating yourselves.”
“What should we do with breakfast,” said Chilton, “if not eat it?”
“It does seem a gross way of dealing with it,” said France.
“We shall never cease to feel guilty over the ordinary needs of life,” said Clare. “We know that Aunt Hetta has organised the meal. Why did she do it, if there is something unfit about it?”
“What did you say, Clare?”
“I said Aunt Hetta had organised the meal, Grandma.”
“Then see that you realise it. There is no joke in what is true.”
“Aunt Hetta often misses prayers,” said Victor. “Can she have miscalculated the time they take, after her long practice?”
“The gong should go after prayers and not before,” said France. “What is it for, if not to mark the beginning of Aunt Hetta’s day?”
“Go and find your aunt,” said Sabine. “And the rest of you lay down your knives and forks until she appears.”
“Then life will go on from the moment it stopped, as if in the fairy tale,” said Clare.
“I go to lead the search,” said Chilton. “Victor comes to work under me. Aunt Hetta should be here to organise it.”
“I will go and look in the library,” said Edith and Alfred at the same moment.
“No, I will go,” said John, feeling his mother’s eyes.
“I will remain at the table,” said France. “There must be someone to eat forgotten food with the old-fashioned forks, if Aunt Hetta does not appear for a hundred years.”
“Oh, a clever fancy,” said Sabine, who seemed wrought up beyond reason.
“Will Grandma be an interesting survival in a hundred years?” said Clare. “Or does she appear in every generation? I hope Aunt Hetta will soon be here. We are managing badly without her.”
“I am glad you see that,” said Sabine, “if only in your own selfish and silly spirit.”
John’s voice was heard at the door, at once low and sharp, controlled and shaken.
“France, come here; I want you, France. Come to me alone; do not bring anyone. Come here at once.”
France went out and Sabine rose to her feet.
“What is it?” she said, the instant cry in her voice sending them forward into fear. “What is it? Where is my daughter?”
John was standing in the hall with a letter in his hand. He drew France to the light and held it for her to read. He was pale and he watched the signs of her face.
“My dear brother,
“This is my one word of goodbye. You know I do not waste my words. My place in your life is filled. You know I have had no other place. I am not afraid of the final step. You know I am not a person who is afraid. I need not go on telling you what you know. You know we shall not meet again.
“Your loving sister,
“Hetta.”
“What does it mean, France? What does she say? It is not what it seems? What is it? What can I say to my mother?”
France could never recall the feelings of the moment. She could remember a sense of relief that her father did not suffer first for himself. Sabine was at his side, but his question had no answer.
“What is it? What is it to do with France? Tell me, my son. Answer your mother!”
John signed to France to keep the letter in her hands. Sabine screamed aloud for her glasses, and Clare came out and gave them to her, unaware of the truth. Sabine put them on in a fumbling, aged way, seeming absorbed in the task, and then with an almost wily movement snatched the letter and held it to her eyes.
“What is it? What does she say, my Hetta? She is not gone from her mother! What has she done? What have we done to her between us? I did not know what I was doing. I ought to have known. I was her mother; I ought not to have let them hound and hurt her, people stronger and younger than she. I ought not to have let them; I ought not, I ought not.”
Sabine’s voice failed and she staggered where she stood. John came to support her and found Alfred was before him. He gave him the letter, including him among themselves, and signed to him to show it to the others. The brothers heard the sounds and came downstairs, and Chilton read the letter aloud in a low tone. John moved aside and stood in thought, as if he were alone. France kept her eyes on his face. The sound of Chilton’s voice with the words she knew, caused Sabine’s voice again to rise.
“My Hetta, my daughter! Why do women think of men? Why do mothers think of sons, when they have their daughters? Men can think of themselves. She was a woman and helpless. She has been sacrificed to others, my daughter.”
Edith held out her hand for the letter. Sabine almost snatched it from her grandson and thrust it towards her, as if willing to force on her the worst. Chilton’s eyes followed it, as if it was a living thing. Clare looked stricken; John had the same expression; Victor had a startled look and glanced at his sisters. If Hetta had returned, she would have seen what she had done. This thought came to Sabine and raised her voice again.
“I did not know; I did not know what I did. I did not see I seemed to think nothing of Hetta. She lived for us all, and we did nothing for her, nothing. She went on, year after year, never had change, never had pleasure, never wanted her years for herself, though she knew they would not come to her again. She will never know what her mother felt, how my heart ached and bled when I found I had done her harm. She thought I did not care, thought that of her mother. It is I who have done it. My son and I have driven Hetta to her death. They say the old do not feel like the young, but it is not true that he is feeling more than I. It is I who am grieving for Hetta, who am grieving alone for my girl.”
The thrust in her words went home, and John was free from his deepest pity and faced her.
“I cannot see it in that way. I cannot see that as the truth. Looking back on it all, I cannot see that it should have driven her to this. I do not take the blame on myself: I do not put it on to you.”
“Is Aunt Hetta dead?” said Muriel.
“No, no, we hope not,” said Alfred. “We think she is not—yet—”
His voice failed on the word, but Sabine had heard.
“Not yet! Not yet! We are in time; we can do something. Go after her and find her. Go, all you young men, go!” She swept her son and grandsons together with a gesture which recalled her daughter, and seemed to point the truth that it was the mother who survived. “Go and find her and bring her to her mother.”
She sank into a chair and sat as if almost content, waiting for her words to come true.
Edith stood apart, feeling the cause of the tragedy, shrinking from speech, knowing she must soon be heard, faltering into idle and empty words.
“Shall I take Muriel upstairs and keep her out of the way?”
“No, do not keep anyone out of the way,” said Sabine. “All go and look for her together. Then you will find her; then you will come to her before she gets there, before she can reach the river. She can’t do it if you are in time.”
The words came simply, evenly, as if the thought behind them were too strong for her strength, as if grasping it took all her power.
John came forward and spoke quickly and clearly, without any hint of seeing and hearing himself.
“We will go, as nothing should not be done. Victor and I will go in one direction, Alfred and Chilton in another; and clearly we will go at this moment. It is only a chance: there are other ways. There is enough in the house for the rest of you. There is what your aunt does; there is your grandmother.” He kept his voice swift and steady on all the words. “There is nothing for you to have on your minds; there is no blame on anyone; I even feel there is none on me. People can act for themselves and by themselves. My sister never acted in any other way. When they do that, the action is their own.”
He left the room, followed by the three young men, stooping to his mother as he passed, forcing himself to meet her almost vacant eyes, sending a smile to his daughters, seeming to see his family as what it had been for so long. Then, remembering, he turned and came to his wife, and took a natural leave, as if showing others and himself that he was justified in what he did.
“What has Aunt Hetta done?” said Muriel, as the door closed.
“Nothing, we hope,” said Clare. “You had better go upstairs.”
“You need not spare the child,” said Sabine. “You did not spare my daughter. You did nothing for Hetta; you would not care if she was dead. You only think of the five of yourselves. You think you are the world.”
“Well, that is not unnatural, Grandma. We have had to be our own world. We have had no other.”
“Smartness, smartness,” said Sabine, so much in her daughter’s voice that she might have been mimicking the words. “I get so sick of it.”
A silence followed.
“You have taken what you want from her. You are too old to need her now. You have had her years, and now you will have your own. You are old enough to manage for yourselves, old enough to manage for Muriel. And nothing else matters; nothing else counts; Hetta does not matter; Hetta does not count; Hetta who is brave and gifted, who has not kept things for herself, who is so much more of a person than any of you; you who would snatch it from her, the little she would have had, the little that would have kept her for her mother.”
Sabine rose and went out of the room, seeming to wander, seeming to feel some purpose she could not grasp with her mind.
“That is the trouble,” said France, “not keeping things for yourself, not having what is your own. The lesson is driven home now.”
“What ought Aunt Hetta to have had?” said Muriel.
“I am the cause of it all,” said Edith. “But how could I know? Why should I cause a tragedy by doing what other women do years before?”
“That is the tragedy,” said Clare, “that it did not happen before.”
“The tragedy is giving up your life to someone who will not repay you with his own,” said France. “Finding that he will not give you any part of his prime, in return for the whole of yours.”
“Not even the end of it,” said Clare.
“Father does not think of it as the end. We don’t know yet how much of our life will be prime.” France hardly smiled, and turned and went to the window.
“They will not be back yet,” said Clare.
“What have they gone to do?” said Muriel.
“The horses will take them some way,” said Edith, “and they took field glasses. It will not be so long. What about your grandmother?”
They could do nothing for Sabine. She did not seem to see them, did not speak when they spoke, wandered until she sank from weakness, remained in any seat until she had strength to rise. The time passed and the men returned. They had found nothing, and brought just this amount of hope. Sabine came to meet them with an air of simple welcome, and, seeing them without her daughter, fell into a wild mood, crying to herself, starting up at every sound, making it an effort to move and breathe in her hearing or sight.
The brothers came and sat down with their sisters, boyish and silent. They were tired and kept their seats, and seemed by this to have gone further with the truth.
“We can do nothing more,” said Chilton. “We have done nothing.”
“Don’t people sometimes drag rivers?” said Muriel.
“That would be no good,” said Alfred, seeming to answer them all. “It would prevent nothing. It could only confirm it, and that would indeed be no good.”
The midday meal was not on the table, the first sign that Hetta was not in the house. The servants were so used to waiting for orders, that they had waited, giving themselves to their emotions. The young people almost wondered if such things would be held to count. But John gave a calm, firm order for the meal, the first sign that others would do what his sister had done. Sabine hardly ate and hardly stayed at the table, and resumed her wandering, now with a low wail.
The picture of their home without their aunt was in the young minds. In their thought the whole course of their day depended on her. It seemed that they could not eat or drink or sleep without her. Her effort through the hours of all their days grew to a mighty thing. Their life failed and fell away at every point. They seemed to lay down their separate natures and to be joined in one great feeling. Edith saw before her a life with her husband, clouded, burdened, shamed. Sabine wandered on, giving her unconscious cry. Muriel looked at the faces about her and wept. Clare did the same, less simply, feeling the rise of remorse. Victor tried to be admonishing and firm, and became childish and sharp. Chilton and France said a word to each other or were silent. Alfred swallowed some food and followed Sabine.
The day seemed to get itself to its end. Hetta was not there to guide it. The hours could only pass by themselves, dragging, failing, breaking down. The evening meal was on the table. It was met by a feeling of surprise and dim relief. Things could happen without Hetta. Other people could do what she had done; other people did what she had taught them to do.
In the evening Miss Marcon and Rowland came. The news had spread and they came from their families, sent to enquire and sympathise. Stephen might have done better than his sister. Miss Marcon’s impression of humour was something she could not lay aside.
“We will not speak,” she said, standing with her opaque eyes seeming to strive for expression. “Words are no good. We will just say nothing. We had to come to do what we could.”
Sabine had raised her eyes—she was unable to raise her head—and Rowland caught the look and came to her.
“It is too much; it is too much,” he said, kneeling by her chair. “You must not face it. Try to look aside. It may not be as it seems.”
“It ought to have been me,” said Miss Marcon in deep, solemn tones. “It ought not to have been Hetta. I ought to have written a note and gone. Stephen and I both feel it ought to have been me.”
Muriel gave a tremble of laughter, and glanced about, guilty and startled by herself. The words seemed to bring the loss of Hetta into the range of the possible and permanent. Sabine raised her eyes again and her voice came, the voice of a woman older than eighty five.
“You have not brought Hetta with you? If you have not, why have you come? Why have you come to her mother? We do not want what you can say. It is Hetta we want, not you.”
“It is Hetta we all want,” said Rowland.
“Of course you do not want what we can say,” said Miss Marcon. “We knew words were no good. And of course it is Hetta you want and not us. We wish we could not be here. We wish we had gone with Hetta and done it with her. Then you would not have had us and not her: it would not have been the worst.”
“She was better than John,” said Sabine, looking at Miss Marcon with earnest eyes. “She was better than all the rest. There was never anyone like her. Now everyone is the same.”
“She was indeed,” said John, using the past tense of his sister, as his mother had used it. “We shall be without our head, without our leader. We shall go on as best we may.”
But they would go on; the word was said.
And from that moment they went on.
The friends said a few more words and left. Stephen was sent by his sister and Sabine was ordered to bed. She was helpless and only half alive, and was laid away out of sight.
The idea of rest had been put into their minds, and the hour was late. The day was over, this first day.
And the next day was different.
Sabine was not fit to rise and her son had his breakfast by her bed. The group downstairs seemed dimmed and weak with their leaders gone. Edith and Clare came to the head of the table. They smiled, gave way to each other, saw that Edith should fill the place; saw, as they did so, that things would settle themselves. And the new life was under way, and the place was filled.
“Edith had better sit there always, and say nothing to Grandma,” said Chilton. “It is the only thing.”
“Is it difficult to do the things at that place?” said Muriel.
“It means you have to think all the time of other people,” said Edith, “and that is difficult.”
“You don’t mind doing it, do you?”
“I have only just begun. That means nothing.”
“Edith has had a hard training at the hands of people like you,” said Clare.
“Will there be luncheon to-day?”
“Yes, of course there will. It would do no good to starve. It only means talking to the cook; I can see about it.”
“Is that all—is that what Aunt Hetta did?”
“We don’t know yet all that she did.”
The thought had come that they were beginning to know.
“Will anyone be able to help Father to-day?”
“He will not work much to-day,” said Edith. “Later I shall do what I can. I shall not be able to do as much as your aunt.”
“Are we quite sure that Aunt Hetta won’t come back?”
“I am afraid we are nearly sure.”
“I once heard Father say to Grandma that Aunt Hetta did more than he liked—more than he wanted her to do. So perhaps you won’t have to do so very much.”
“He did not say it to you. And whatever there is to do, will be more than I have done.”
“You are talking more than usual, Muriel,” said France.
“Aunt Hetta used to tell me to talk.”
“Is Muriel now going to live her life as Aunt Hetta would wish?”
“She would like you to be quiet this morning,” said Edith.
“Someone will have to be with Grandma,” said Clare. “Father can’t give her all his time.”
“He won’t be able to settle down to-day,” said Chilton. “And that is a good thing, if keeping with Grandma is to be as it was yesterday.”
“You are talking like you did before—when Aunt Hetta was here,” said Muriel, looking at him with open eyes.
“I wish you would do the same, Muriel,” said France. “You have a new way of talking.”
“You are talking like you used to talk too.”
“Well, we shall come to that. We shan’t be able to claim that we are changed.”
“I think you have come to it now. And if Grandma dies soon, I don’t think we shall be changed even then.”
“Is this Muriel’s way of keeping green Aunt Hetta’s memory?”
“Well, my girls and boys!” said John at the door. “So we have to start again. We must go on the more steadily, that one of us has fallen out, show the more resolution, that we shall need more. That is what I can do for my sister, for my sister and the dearest and best of my friends.”
“Will Aunt Hetta know?” said Muriel in a lower tone.
“I heard your voices, and knew you had made your start. And I admired you for it. You had your father’s sympathy.”
“Did he admire us?” said France to her brothers. “Sympathy is not admiration. You do not sympathise over what you admire. And sympathy is what we had.”
“We did make the start rather soon,” said Clare.
“And it was a real, unconscious start.”
“Father, should anything be done?” said Chilton. “Do we regard anything definite as having happened? Ought we to put it in the papers? Or do anything at all?”
“Ought we to go into black?” said Muriel. “Everyone has black clothes, not only grown up people. Then perhaps the same clothes would do when Grandma dies, and that would save a lot of money.”
“Nothing at the moment, my son. We know nothing, though we feel we know. We can only wait, though our hearts may warn us we wait for nothing.” John had a look as of glancing back over a long past. “I feel I can give you advice, as I have lost the most. I am asking no effort I am not prepared to make.”
“Then will things be so very different?” whispered Muriel. “They will be the same, won’t they, except for not having Aunt Hetta? And she did not like living with us very much, did she? I mean, she won’t mind very much, if she does know?”
“She has chosen it herself, and that is our comfort or not,” said John to his elder children. “We must take what we get from it, the comfort and the doubt, and carry them with us. I do not think our burden should be too great. My sister asked much from life; her demands were on the scale of herself.”
“And she did not like some things that Father does not mind,” whispered Muriel, “and that Grandma does not mind either, now she is really old. I mean things won’t really be so very bad. Because we only have to think of people who are alive. We can’t help her being dead, can we?”
“My innocent child, you cannot help it,” said John.
“I don’t call Muriel innocent,” said Chilton to France.
“Muriel has got over her first sorrow. Time, the healer, has done his work and done it in a day.”
“How is Grandma this morning?” said Victor.
“Sorrow has not done nothing for Victor,” said Chilton. “It has brought out something that is not self.”
John laid his hand on Chilton’s shoulder, with a smile as of understanding. The door opened and Alfred entered, and stood holding it open, and it was realised that he had not appeared before that day.
“So you are all here,” said Sabine, in a weak, sharp voice, entering the room in a dishevelled state, which told of the loss of her daughter. “I do not want to be shut up alone; I do not want that sort of comfort. That is a poor kind, though it is the kind we are given. So you have all had breakfast?” She paused by the table, leaning on her stick and looking over it. “And a good breakfast too. Yes, you have had it as usual; you have made no difference. And my Hetta is where she does not need it. She will never eat again. And she has thought of it so often for all of you. She has taught you to think of it for yourselves. That is how you know. Yes, you know how to manage, don’t you? You will say that Hetta was no good: I see it coming.”
“We did not do anything, Grandma,” said Muriel. “The servants did it.”
“Yes, the servants did it. And they might always have done it, mightn’t they? You say that Hetta was no good. Yes, I hear you say it.”
“We sent breakfast up to you and Father, Grandma,” said Victor. “We are not the only people who had it.”
“That will do, Victor,” said John. “This is not an ordinary day.”
“Yes, we are to talk like that now,” said Sabine. “We are to blame each other for eating and drinking and being alive. And it seems wrong that we should do it. It seems it should not all go on, as if nothing had happened. But it cannot stop. We shall go on; I shall go on, though I am old and ill and alone, and I shall never see Hetta again.”
The door opened in a sudden manner, and stood open before its movement was explained.
“Well, have you all had a lesson?” said Hetta’s voice.
There was the shock, the silence, the realisation, the rush of reaction.
“Well, have you all had a lesson?” said Hetta, coming forward with a strolling step and her eyes seeming to be fixed on nothing, as if her heart misgave her for what she had done.
The time to think sent all eyes to Sabine. The first shock had held the family still, and the instant of her seeing Hetta had passed. She was now sitting forward, as still as they had been, with her eyes drinking in her daughter, as if it was enough to gaze her fill.
“Hetta, this has been a gross piece of cruelty!” said John.
“So you have not liked it? I did not mean that you should. You will learn the more from it for that. I saw you needed a lesson.”
“We shall learn nothing. It is you who will learn. You will learn that you cannot resort to evil to work your way, to achieve any petty purpose. You cannot return after conscious wickedness, and be received as if nothing had happened, as if we were under some compulsion to bow to your despotic will, as if you were justified in any extreme to force us under it.”
“I do not want to be received as if nothing has happened; I do not intend to be. As for forcing you under my will, I hope I have done enough to ensure that, for it is a most necessary thing. I shall wait for the lesson to work its result.”
“You will see its result. You will not have to wait. You will not be welcomed back as if everything depended on you. Things depend on you no longer. You have taught us that your service to us is not worth the price we have paid.”
“You have not liked paying, have you? You had not meant ever to pay. But it was time you paid something for what you have taken, for what you call my service. You wanted to have it for nothing. That can go on for too long.”
John turned away, and Hetta went to the table, with her eyes ostensibly criticising the food. She did not say when she had eaten, did not say where she had lain. It was clear that she had not slept. The other things were never known.
Edith was still at the head of the table, forgetting where she was in watching the scene. Hetta came up to her and stood very close, waiting for her to withdraw. She had hardly risen, when her husband intercepted her and almost held her into the seat.
“Stay where you are. That is your place now. Hetta has given it up. She made us believe she was dead, and dead people have no place. She has showed us how to do without her, and perhaps we have learned easily. Perhaps we were further with the lesson than we knew.”
Hetta stood still, with a smile on her lips, waiting for Edith to move. She stood so close that Edith had no choice; and, taking the seat, set to her meal, as if easily occupied with it. But she kept her eyes from her mother, as she had from the first.
Sabine watched her eat, as if she followed her every sensation, and then began to make signs from her chair, motioning the others back to the table. They saw what she meant and returned, and she leaned back in content, holding them together with a gesture and sometimes lifting her hand to repeat and enforce it.
“You have done great harm, Hetta,” said John. “Mater may not recover from this. It is too much at her age.”
“It was about the right amount at yours. It was you I was thinking of. We can’t always think of everyone. And I see I thought it out very well.”
Her brother turned his back, as if hopeless, and Hetta began to talk to the others, as if nothing had come between them. They had no choice but to respond, tied as they were to the table by Sabine’s eyes; and by the time she fell asleep, they seemed on their ordinary footing. John, a man of rapid moods, and used to his sister’s companionship, was drawn into the talk unawares, and no one coming on the family would have seen what was beneath the surface. One of them did not see it.
“Shall I have a holiday to-day?” said Muriel, in a voice that could just be heard.
“Why should you?” said Clare.
“Because Aunt Hetta has come back.”
“Yes, you can have one,” said Hetta, not moving her eyes.
“You had one when your aunt was away,” said John. “You do not need another, unless Edith needs it.”
“That was not a holiday, Father.”
“Of course it was not,” said Hetta. “It is quite clear what she means. She need not do anything to-day.”
“That is for Edith to decide. She has been teaching her.”
“Only in a casual spirit, hasn’t she, as a temporary thing? If that is the case, it is for me to decide. Or has she gone back to being the governess?”
John did not answer, could not, was less ready with his words, found himself silent before his sister, silent before his future.
As they left the table, a pile of paper was shown at Edith’s place.
“What is that?” said Hetta.
“I brought it down to copy something for John, the chapter which you had begun.”
“And you kept it on the breakfast table? You were not going to have it for breakfast.”
“We had just got up when you came in, and I had taken it from the desk.”
“Do not explain,” said John to his wife. “We owe Hetta no explanation.” But he paused, dumb before the evidence that he had not broken his life for his sister’s death, as his sister was dumb before it.
“That is not the paper we use,” said Hetta, taking a piece in her fingers. “The ink will run on it, and show through on the other side.”
“The ink does not run on this,” said Edith, “and we only use one side.”
Their custom was established, in one day.
Hetta gave her laugh and turned away, as if not concerned with her brother.
The brother did not work that day. He did not dare to ask Edith’s help, did not dare to ask Hetta’s, did not dare to work alone. Alfred and the boys sat at their books, Alfred alert for a summons from Sabine. Sabine followed Hetta about the house, standing with her eyes on her face, reproducing on her own face its every change, struggling with every step, leaning on anything that came to hand. Downstairs Edith and the sisters were left by themselves.
“Our glimpse of freedom was brief,” said France. “Has it come to seem to be that?”
“We shall soon have another kind of freedom,” said Clare. “Aunt Hetta has killed Grandma.”
“It is unfortunate to harm anyone of eighty five. You are said to have killed her, when it is such a small part of the killing you have done. It is eighty five years that have killed Grandma.”
“Aren’t we glad that Aunt Hetta has come back?” said Muriel.
“Your aunt has defeated her own ends,” said Edith. “We reached the stage of imagining life without her and not of realising it, and the second stage is the test. Her plan was sound, but she did not give it a chance.”
“She might have starved if she had stayed away any longer,” said Muriel.
“I think she had starved while she was away,” said Clare. “She could not get food near, for fear of spreading the news. People don’t want nourishment when they are going to their death.”
Muriel burst into laughter.
“Not—not for their after life,” she said, breaking off with her eyes on her elders.
“Is this our influence?” said Clare. “Muriel, would you have been better if you had had another sister?”
“What had Father done to Aunt Hetta?” said Muriel.
“She thought he did not appreciate what she did for him.”
“What would have happened, if Aunt Hetta had stayed away longer and given the plan a chance?”
“Grandma would be dead, and we should all be in the power of Aunt Hetta.”
“She wanted the last,” said France, “and she must have wanted it very much. And I don’t know that it was too much to want in return for her life.”
“France is fonder of Aunt Hetta than other people are,” said Muriel. “But Aunt Hetta is not so fond of France as other people are. We shall never forget this time, shall we?”
“We shall have to pretend to forget it,” said France. “Aunt Hetta is going to be embarrassed by it. She is already embarrassed.”
This was the truth. The next days seemed to hover on the brink of something which threatened and gradually fell away. Hetta did her usual work, but gave it less time, betraying her sense that it had lost its mystery. Sabine recovered part of her strength, but seldom spoke, and never left Hetta in a room alone. John and his sister fell into their habit of talk, but never said an intimate word. John and Edith were openly husband and wife. The young people dealt with their aunt on easier terms. Their father worked alone, as he was to work for the rest of his life, and had more time for his family. The servants recognised Edith’s authority as well as Hetta’s. Hetta had not done what she meant to do, but she had not done nothing.