Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/217

Rh But Mrs. Despard knew.

Mrs. Eden talked on gaily and gladly—till not even a straw was left for her hearer to cling to.

"Thank you very much," she said. "I see it was all a mistake. I must have been wrong about the address." She spoke hurriedly—for she had heard in the shop a step that she knew.

For one moment a white face peered in at the glass door—then vanished; it was Miss Eden's face—her face as it had been when she told of her lost lover who died waving his sword at Elendslaagte! But the telling of that tale had moved Mrs. Despard to no such passion of pity as this. For from that face now something was blotted out, and the lack of it was piteous beyond thought.

"Thank you very much. I am so sorry to have troubled you," she said, and somehow got out of the plush parlour, and through the shop, fruit-filled, orange-scented.

At the station there was still time, and too much time. The bookstall yielded pencil, paper, envelope, and stamp. She wrote—

"Ella, dear, whatever happens, I am always