ction:
"Assume that everything is as usual."

On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day was
lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily's imperative bidding,
had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the yacht. The repast
had been the most difficult moment of the day. Dorset was sunk in one of
the abysmal silences which so commonly followed on what his wife called
his "attacks" that it was easy, before the servants, to refer it to this
cause; but Bertha herself seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to
make use of this obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt
of the situation on her husband's hands, as if too absorbed in a
grievance of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one
herself. To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most
perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the weak
flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling structure of
"appearances," her own attention was perpetually distracted by the
question: "What on earth can she be driving at?" There was something
positively exasperating in Bertha's attitude of isolated defiance. If
only she would have given her friend a hint they might still have worked
together successfully; but how could Lily be of use, while she was thus
obstinately shut out from participation? To be of use was what she
honestly wanted; and not for her own sake but for the Dorsets'. She had
not thought of her own situation at all: she was simply engrossed in
trying to put a little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary
evening left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not
tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal of
his confidences. It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and who
should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in the
infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her rescuing
hand.

Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and it
seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that more than an
hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down the silent passage
and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an apparent continuance of the
same conditions, revealed nothing of what had occurred between the
confronted pair. One fact alone outwardly proclaimed the change they were
all conspiring to ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned
Silverton. No on