The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spinster, by Robert Hichens

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Title: The Spinster
1905

Author: Robert Hichens

Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23410]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPINSTER ***

Produced by David Widger

THE SPINSTER

By Robert Hichens

Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers

Copyright, 1905

I had arrived at Inley Abbey that afternoon, and was sitting at dinner
with Inley and his pretty wife, whom I had not seen for five years,
since the day I was his best man, when we all heard faintly the tolling
of a church bell. Lady Inley shook her shoulders in a rather exaggerated
shudder.

"Someone dead!" said her husband.

"It's a mistake to build a church in the grounds of a house," Lady Inley
said in her clear, drawling soprano voice. "That noise gives me the
blues."

"Whom can it be for?" asked Inley.

"Miss Bassett, probably," Lady Inley replied carelessly, helping herself
to a bonbon from a little silver dish.

Inley started.

"Miss Sarah Bassett! What makes you think so?"

"Oh, while you were away in town she got ill. Didn't you know?"

"No," said Inley.

I could see that he was moved. His dark, short face had changed
suddenly, and he stopped eating his fruit. Lady Inley went on crunching
the bonbon between her little white teeth with all the enjoyment of a
pretty marmoset.

"Influenza," she said airily. "And then pneumonia. Of course, at her
age, you know---- By the way, what is her age, Nino?"

"No idea," said Inley shortly.

He was listening to the dim and monotonous sound of the church bell.

Lady Inley turned to me with the childish, confidential movement which
men considered one of her many charms.

"Miss Bassett is, or was, one of those funny old spinsters who always
look the same and always ridiculous. Dry twigs, you know. One size all
the way down. Very little hair, and no emotions. If it weren't for the
sake of cats, one would wonder why such people are born. But they're
always cat-lovers. I suppose that's why they're so often called old
cats."

She uttered a little high-pitched laugh, and got up.

"Don't be