“Oh I can't, I can't!” she cried, with a kind of moan. “What is the good? Why should I get up day after day and go through this weariness? Oh, my God! What a life! Some day it will drive me mad! I wish I were dead.”
The sobs came and shook her shoulders, hidden by the spreading mass of hair. She could not help the pity for herself.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. She sprang to her feet, glanced hurriedly at the glass, and touched her face quickly with the powder-puff. In a moment she had recovered.
Felicia entered in response to her acknowledgment of the knock. She had been out in the rain; her cheeks were glowing above the turned-up collar of her jacket.
“Oh, you are only just dressing. I have been up and about for ages. See, I have brought you some flowers. Where shall I put them?”
Katherine felt gladdened by the little act of kindness. She thanked Felicia, and went about the room collecting a few vases.
“Arrange them for me, dear, whilst I finish my hair.”
She returned to the looking-glass, and Felicia remained by the table busy with the flowers.
“I went as far as the library with Mr. Chetwynd,” said Felicia. “I told him he ought not to go out to-day, but he would go. When 'Raine,' as he calls him, comes, I shall have to talk to him seriously about his father.”
“The son has definitely settled to come, then?” asked Katherine, with a hair-pin between her lips.
“Oh, yes. Mr. Chetwynd can talk of nothing else. He will be here quite soon.”
“It will be a good thing,” said Katherine.
Ordinarily Katherine would have smiled at the ingenuousness of the reply; but this morning her nerves were unstrung.
“I wasn't thinking of him. I was thinking of ourselves--us women.”
“I wonder what he'll be like,” said Felicia.
“Oh, it does matter. If he is not nice--”
“My dear child,” said Katherine, wheeling round, “it does not signify whether he has the face of an ogre and the manners of a bear. He will be a man; and it is a man that we want among us!”
The girl shrank away. To look upon mankind as necessary elements in life had never before occurred to her. She would have been quite as excited if a nice girl had been expected at the pension.
Katherine divined her thought; but she was too much under the power of her mood to laugh it away.