ly
papers, if she was going to turn back in five minutes. Then she
remembered that this was Richard's mother, and that for some reason he
set great store by her; and she tried to smile, and laid her fingers on
the doorknob to open it. But Marion shook her head and put out a
prohibitory hand with so urgent a gesture that the unlit lantern which
hung by a strap from her wrist bumped against the glass.

Yet she remained for some seconds longer with her face pressed close to
the window. She was peering into the room with an expression of wanting
to fix its contents and its appearance in her memory, which was odd in
the owner of the house. Ellen moved aside in order not to impede her
vision, and stood disliking her for her pervasive inexplicability and
for her extreme plainness. She had been very ugly all that evening since
she came down to dinner, and now the shining glass in front of her face
was acting in its uncomeliness like a magnifying lens. Her hair had
suddenly become greasy during the last few hours, and it showed in lank
loops where her hat had been carelessly jammed down on her head. In the
same short space of time her face seemed to have grown fatter, and her
skin had taken on the pallor of unhealthy obesity. Against it the dark
down on her upper lip looked like dirt. Her eyes were not magnificent
to-night. After she had stared round the room she looked again at Ellen,
and gave her a forced smile that looked the more unpleasant because the
corners of her mouth were joined to her nose by deep creases. It so
manifestly did not spring from any joy, that Ellen could not answer it
save by just such another false grin. Her honesty hated this woman who
had thus negotiated her into insincerity, and she turned away. When she
looked back the face had gone.

She went back to the fire and sat thinking bitterly what a daft thing it
was for a wife to go wandering round her own house in the night like a
thief. But Marion was altogether an upsetting woman. She had kept the
dinner waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour, and when she came down
it was revealed that she had caused this delay, which must have
inconvenienced the kitchen and was sheer cruelty to Richard, who had
made next to nothing of a tea, by dressing herself up in a black and
gold brocade affair that it was sheer madness to waste wearing when
there was no company, and putting on jewels which made her stricken
plainness look the more soiled and leaden. Then, once