Page:Early Autumn (1926).pdf/34

 And giving his daughter-in-law a quick look of affection he led Mrs. Soames away across the terrace to his motor.

It was only after they had gone that Olivia discovered Sabine standing in the corridor in her brilliant green dress watching the two old people from the shadow of one of the deep-set windows. For a moment, absorbed in the sight of John Pentland helping Mrs. Soames with a grim courtliness into the motor, neither of them spoke, but as the motor drove away down the long drive under the moon-silvered elms, Sabine sighed and said, "I can remember her as a great beauty . . . a really great beauty. There aren't any more like her, who make their beauty a profession. I used to see her when I was a little girl. She was beautiful—like Diana in the hunting-field. They've been like that for . . . for how long. . . . It must be forty years, I suppose."

"I don't know," said Olivia quietly. "They've been like that ever since I came to Pentlands." (And as she spoke she was overcome by a terrible feeling of sadness, of an abysmal futility. It had come to her more and more often of late, so often that at times it alarmed her lest she was growing morbid.)

Sabine was speaking again in her familiar, precise, metallic voice. "I wonder," she said, "if there has ever been anything. . . ."

Olivia, divining the rest of the question, answered it quickly, interrupting the speech. "No . . . I'm sure there's never been anything more than we've seen. . . . I know him well enough to know that."

For a long time Sabine remained thoughtful, and at last she said: "No . . . I suppose you're right. There couldn't have been anything. He's the last of the Puritans. . . . The others don't count. They go on pretending, but they don't believe any more. They've no vitality left. They're only hypocrites and shadows. . . . He's the last of the royal line."