Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/90

74 and boudoir. The hangings, which were still swaying from the opening of the door, had taken permanently the folds in which they had hung for many years; there were the scores of long-time idleness, not of use, in the rugs and upholstery of the chairs. The bed, however, was freshly made up, as though the bed clothing had been changed occasionally. Alan went through the bedroom to the door of the boudoir, and saw that that too had the same look of unoccupancy and disuse. On the low dressing table were scattered such articles as a woman starting on a journey might think it not worth while to take with her. There was no doubt that these were the rooms of his father's wife.

Had his father preserved them thus, as she had left them, in the hope that she might come back, permitting himself to fix no time when he abandoned that hope, or even to change them after he had learned that she was dead? Alan thought not; Sherrill had said that Corvet had known from the first that his separation from his wife was permanent. The bed made up, the other things neglected, and evidently looked after or dusted only at long separated periods, looked more as though Corvet had shrunk from seeing them or even thinking of them, and had left them to be looked after wholly by the servant, without ever being able to bring himself to give instructions that they should be changed. Alan felt that he would not be surprised to learn that his father never had entered these ghostlike rooms since the day his wife had left him.

On the top of a chest of high drawers in a corner near the dressing table were some papers. Alan went over to look at them; they were invitations, notices of concerts and of plays twenty years old—the mail,