Free The Fire Within by Patricia Wentworth Page B

yesterday, and—how long is it since Dr. Ellerton died?”
    “More than two years.”
    “Well, she has gone quite out of mourning. You know how she went on
at first—she was going to wear weeds always, and never change
anything, and as to ever going into colours again, she could n't
imagine how any one could do it! And I met her out yesterday in quite a
bright blue coat and skirt. What do you think of that?”
    “Oh, Molly, you 've been going out to too many tea-parties! Why
should n't poor Katie go out of mourning? I think it 's very sensible
of her. I have always been so sorry for her.”
    Mary assumed an air of lofty virtue. “I used to be. But now,
I don't approve of her at all. She 's just doing her very best to catch
David Blake. Every one can see it. If that wretched little Ronnie has
so much as a thorn in his finger, she sends for David. She 's making
herself the laughing-stock of the place. I think it 's simply horrid. I
don't approve of second marriages at all. I never do see how any really
nice-minded woman can marry again. And it 's not only the marrying, but
to run after a man, like that—it 's quite dreadful! I am sure David
would be most unhappy if he married her. It would be a dreadfully bad
thing for him.”
    Elizabeth leaned back in her chair.
    “How sweet the hour
that sets us free
    To sip our scandal, and our tea,”she observed.
    Mary coloured.
    “I never talk scandal,” she said in an offended voice, and Elizabeth
refrained from telling her that Miss Dobell had made the same remark.
    All the time that Mary was showing her over the house, Elizabeth was
wondering whether it would be such a dreadfully bad thing for David to
marry Katie Ellerton. Ronnie was a dear little boy, and David loved
children, and Katie—Katie was one of those gentle, clinging creatures
whom men adore and spoil. If she cared for him, and he grew to care for
her—Elizabeth turned the possibilities over and over in her mind,
wondering—
    She wondered still more that evening, when David Blake came in after
dinner. He had changed. Elizabeth looked at him and saw things in his
face which she only half understood.. He looked ill and tired, but both
illness and weariness appeared to here to be incidental. Behind them
there was something else, something much stronger and yet more subtle,
some deflection of the man's whole nature.
    Edward and Mary did not disturb themselves at David's coming. They
were at the piano, and Edward nodded casually, whilst Mary merely waved
her hand and smiled.
    David said “How do you do?” to Elizabeth, and sat down by the fire.
He was in evening dress, but somehow he looked out of place in Mary's
new white drawing-room. Edward had put in electric light all over the
house, and here it shone through rosy shades. The room was all rose and
white—roses on the chintz, a frieze of roses upon the walls, and a
rose-coloured carpet on the floor. Only the two lamps over the piano
were lighted. They shone on Mary. She was playing softly impassioned
chords in support of Edward, who exercised a pleasant tenor voice upon
the lays of Lord Henry Somerset. Mary played accompaniments with much
sentiment. Occasionally, when the music was easy, she shot an adoring
glance at Edward, a glance to which he duly responded, when not
preoccupied with a note beyond his compass.
    Elizabeth was tolerant of lovers, and Mary's little
sentimentalities, like Mary's airs of virtuous matronhood, were often
quite amusing to watch; but to-night, with David Blake as a fourth
person in the room, Elizabeth found amusement merging into irritation
and irritation into pain. Except for that lighted circle about the
piano, the room lay all in shadow. There was a soft dusk upon it,
broken every now that then by gleams of firelight. David Blake sat back
in his chair, and the dimness of the room hid his face, except when the
fire blazed up and showed Elizabeth how changed it was. She had been