Changes in The Towers, Frances told me, had been made during Mabel’s year of widowhood abroad--an organ put into the big hall, the library made liveable and recatalogued--when it was permissible to suppose she had found her soul again and returned to her normal, healthy views of life, which included enjoyment and play, literature, music and the arts, without, however, a touch of that trivial thoughtlessness usually termed worldliness. Mrs. Franklyn, as I remembered her, was a quiet little woman, shallow, perhaps, and easily influenced, but sincere as a dog and thorough in her faithful friendships. Her tastes at heart were catholic, and that heart was simple and unimaginative. That she took up with the various movements of the day was sign merely that she was searching in her limited way for a belief that should bring her peace. She was, in fact, a very ordinary woman, her calibre a little less than that of Frances. I knew they used to discuss all kinds of theories together, but as these discussions never resulted in action, I had come to regard her as harmless. Still, I was not sorry when she married, and I did not welcome now a renewal of the former intimacy. The philanthropist had given her no children, or she would have made a good and sensible mother. No doubt she would marry again.
‘Mabel mentions that she’s been alone at The Towers since the end of August,’ Frances told me at tea-time; ‘and I’m sure she feels out of it and lonely. It would be a kindness to go. Besides, I always liked her.’
I agreed. I had recovered from my attack of selfishness. I expressed my pleasure.
‘You’ve written to accept,’ I said, half statement and half question.
Frances nodded. ‘I thanked for you,’ she added quietly, ‘explaining that you were not free at the moment, but that later, if not inconvenient, you might come down for a bit and join me.’
I stared. Frances sometimes had this independent way of deciding things. I was convicted, and punished into the bargain.
Of course there followed argument and explanation, as between brother and sister who were affectionate, but the recording of our talk could be of little interest. It was arranged thus, Frances and I both satisfied. Two days later she departed for The Towers, leaving me alone in the flat with everything planned for my comfort and good behaviour--she was rather a tyrant in her quiet way--and her last words as I saw her off from Charing Cross rang in my head for a long time after she was gone: