Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/145

 Nigel, who was like the morning sun streaming in at the windows. He is getting old, too.

She rose and rang the bell and standing in the shadow so that Ottilia should not see she had been weeping, she told her to serve the supper and then go to bed.

I must not let her know that he is not coming. I must not let her know that it matters to me. Aloud she said, "You can leave the supper on the table. I'll serve myself."

Ottilia knew that he wasn't coming. You could tell by the look in her ox-like eyes. They weren't smiling any longer. They had in them a gleam of sympathy. That was because the "cousin" was a lover. Ottilia understood. To be pitied by a servant! In love women were all of one kind. There were no princesses and no servants.

When Ottilia had placed the supper on the table and gone away, the Princess rose and going into the bathroom disposed of the soup and a portion of the vegetables so that in the morning Ottilia would not think that she had been unable to eat. She did this in the proper order so that if Ottilia came in suddenly she would not find all the food disposed of miraculously at once. But Ottilia did not return.

Then she drank coffee, thinking perhaps if I stay awake and pray all night God will send me faith and peace like Jean's. She took out the Thomas-à-Kempis that Jean had given her long ago, and tried to read it. It was a thing she carried with her always, more precious than her pearls, not because of what it contained, but because he had given it to her. He had held it in his hands and had written